Snapdragon X Elite Rivals Best CPUs in Single Thread Performance

Last week during its annual Snapdragon Summit held in Maui, Qualcomm dropped a bomb on the computing world with the announcement of the Snapdragon X Elite processor, a new SoC targeted at the notebook PC going squarely after the likes of Intel, Apple, and AMD. You’ll no doubt find a lot of articles posting this morning that summarize a collection of about six different benchmarks that the press was able to witness being run (no true hands on), but I wanted to focus on one particular set of results of interest to me.

Cinebench is one of those consistent measures of CPU performance used throughout the industry and by all kinds of hardware vendors (including AMD and Intel) over the years. The latest 2024 version was used to measure both single and multi-threaded CPU performance with a handful of results shown by Qualcomm during the event and seen hands-on. Obviously, as with all performance data not run by press/analysts with a free hand on the device, we should keep a clear mind that results could change. Couple that with the fact that we are still 6+ months away from having retail system availability, that is even MORE true with the Snapdragon X Elite.

That said, let’s look at a chart.

Snapdragon X Elite Single Thread Performance

There are 10 different results here, looking only at single threaded scores. This, to me, is the leading indicator to what kind of performance we can expect from this platform in 2024. While MT performance is great and useful for a lot of purposes, it is single threaded performance that still dominates for many application workloads and also drives the user experience.

The top 5 scores were provided by Qualcomm and/or shown during the benchmark session held during the Snapdragon Summit last week. Those are all mobile CPUs. The first two are the Snapdragon X Elite platforms running with two different TDP settings – 80 watts and 23 watts – meant to emulate different implementations of the processor that system OEMs might take. BOTH system scores on the X Elite CPUs are faster than the Apple M2, the Intel Core i7-13800H, and the Ryzen 9 7940HS.

Not enough to just settle there, I wanted to see what the best desktop processors single threaded performance was like in comparison. Those are the next 5 scores, coming from our friends at Anandtech.com and their 14900K review. That brand new, 14th generation Core i9 part from Intel, the very best single threaded option in the desktop line with a 6.0 GHz max boost clock and a 253-watt maximum turbo power…is just 1.5% faster than the Oryon core that boosts up to 4.3 GHz in the X Elite CPU. Even the 23-watt configuration of the Snapdragon X Elite performs up there with the 13900K and is faster than both the 7950X3D and 7950X processors from AMD.

What should you read into this? Will a laptop powered by the Snapdragon X Elite CPU be faster than a desktop running a Core i9-14900K? The answer is probably no, but there is a chance I could be wrong. Qualcomm and Microsoft and their partners still have 6 months to try to squeeze a bit more performance out of this silicon, but there is no doubt this is the best the Intel parts will get. And let’s not forget that the X Elite will have a better integrated GPU, a very high performance integrated NPU for AI processing, and there is a legitimate argument that we will be having next year about true computing leadership across platforms.

Now, of course, we are simplifying by analyzing a single benchmark to extrapolate half a year into the future. And we haven’t brought up multi-threaded performance at all. While the Snapdragon X Elite is going to be faster than the other mobile processors listed here in MT performance, the 14900K will be something like 80% faster in the MT results. And we know that Intel will have new laptop CPUs (Meteor Lake) and we are expecting the Apple M3 CPU (today actually!) and new tech from AMD later this year.

It seems clear that 2024 is going to be an incredibly interesting year for the PC space, and this time Qualcomm wants a full seat at the table.