Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite outperforms AMD's Radeon 780M in 3DMark

[Daniel Sims]

The big picture: Qualcomm unveiled its next-generation Arm processor with internal benchmarks displaying its advantages over leading Intel and AMD CPUs. As outside testers begin to provide independent testimony on the company's upcoming product, its integrated graphics chip shows fascinating results compared to the competition.

YouTuber Geekerwan has posted some of the earliest outside benchmarks for Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processor. The numbers look promising for what could be Windows and Chrome OS's answer to Apple's M series CPUs, especially regarding graphics.

Possibly the most notable results emerged when the Snapdragon was measured against the Radeon 780M – AMD's strongest RDNA 3 integrated GPU. On a laptop limited to 23W, the Snapdragon reached 39.2fps in the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme benchmark, beating the 28.3fps achieved by a 780M running on a Ryzen 7 7840HS with the same wattage. It also nearly equaled the Apple M2, which posted 40fps at 20W.

However, Apple's M2 Max remains king here, speeding to 60fps on just 16W. For added perspective, Geekerwan threw in a 4GB RTX 3050 – an entry-level dedicated graphics card – which posted 52.7fps at 45W. It needs twice as much power to beat the Snapdragon and M2 by only 20 percent and loses to an M2 Max running on a fraction of the wattage.

3DMark is a purely academic test though. The YouTuber also conducted a brief trial with a real game – Control. Although Remedy's critically acclaimed and technically demanding third-person shooter is an x86-only application running through emulation, the AMD and Qualcomm processors exhibit extremely close performance.

The Snapdragon reaches 53fps running at 1080p on low settings, just shy of the 7840HS's 56fps. At 1440p, the Ryzen falls to 30fps while the Snapdragon gains a slight advantage at 32fps. Both easily beat the M2 but fall predictably short of the M2 Max, 3050, and RTX 4060, though the Nvidia chips are, again, receiving over twice as much power.

Moreover, Geekerwan's video (above) contains interesting comparisons in Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024, some of which show the Snapdragon – released from its 23W chains – at its full 4.3GHz clock. In both programs, the Arm CPU scores far higher than the 5.1GHz 7840HS, displaying a clear efficiency advantage. However, Apple's Arm chips nearly match the Snapdragon's score despite clocking at least 600MHz slower.

The Snapdragon X Elite could provide good competition in the emerging Arm processor race when it arrives in the middle of 2024, but Apple's newly unveiled M3 lineup could keep the Cupertino giant in first place for now.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100673-qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-outperforms-amd-radeon-780m.html

 

[Nanochip]

With a strong Qualcomm in the PC space… who is more likely to be hurt, Intel or AMD?

 

[WhiteLeaff]

Neither of them, I bet anyone that Qualcomm will lose money on this move. This is actually quite predictable.

 

[zamroni111]

With a strong Qualcomm in the PC space… who is more likely to be hurt, Intel or AMD?

We will need to see the price.
Microsoft surface pro x was more expensive than the i7 surface pro

 

[maxxcool7421]

With a strong Qualcomm in the PC space… who is more likely to be hurt, Intel or AMD?

Neither .. 70% of the world is not ready to deal with windows on arm and its limitations and app restrictions as they currently stand ... once you can educate the derp crowd on how ARM works differently then x86 you might have a better chance.

you might be able to steal some apple users?

 

[trparky]

Neither .. 70% of the world is not ready to deal with windows on arm and its limitations and app restrictions as they currently stand

But how do you make it happen? Someone has the get the ball moving, once that ball is moving other things can start happening.

 

[Nanochip]

But how do you make it happen? Someone has the get the ball moving, once that ball is moving other things can start happening.

If Qualcomm does well (in terms of sales) and windows on arm is sufficiently palatable in terms of the software experience, Qualcomm’s success could inspire other ARM vendors to enter the arena. Unlike x86, there is no exclusivity license to the ISA. So nvidia could enter if it wanted. And others that we may not even have heard of.

I guess we will have to wait and see how Oryon performs in the market place. But I think an ARM invasion may be coming for client and server. Intel must work as fast as it can to offer much better power efficiency.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Neither .. 70% of the world is not ready to deal with windows on arm and its limitations and app restrictions as they currently stand ... once you can educate the derp crowd on how ARM works differently then x86 you might have a better chance.

you might be able to steal some apple users?

Not the users. They need to steal the Apple engineers who have transitioned CPU architectures successfully 3 times with good emulation. 68K - PowerPC - x86 - ARM

Somehow one company can Just Do It and the others are mystified.

 

[HardReset]

Not the users. They need to steal the Apple engineers who have transitioned CPU architectures successfully 3 times with good emulation. 68K - PowerPC - x86 - ARM

Somehow one company can Just Do It and the others are mystified.

How well current ARM Macs run original PowerPC or 68K software? Very poorly. Basically Apple just abandoned old software and hoped developers made new versions for new architectures. Some developers did it, most did not.

So unlike you said, they didn't do it.

 

[HardReset]

What is this newfound ARM promotion?

Possibly the most notable results emerged when the Snapdragon was measured against the Radeon 780M – AMD's strongest RDNA 3 integrated GPU. On a laptop limited to 23W, the Snapdragon reached 39.2fps in the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme benchmark, beating the 28.3fps achieved by a 780M running on a Ryzen 7 7840HS with the same wattage.

FYI you are comparing who CPUs where other is using integrated memory into SOC and another is not. No wonder integrating memory on same package with GPU gives huge performance boost. However that usually also means memory is not expandable.

Ryzen 7 7840HS supports 256GB memory whereas Snapdragon supports 64GB at most. For same reason even mentioning Apples similar SOCs in comparison for CPUs that can support much more memory is comparing apples to oranges.

I expect Techspot to figure out something as simple as this.

 

[Lew Zealand]

How well current ARM Macs run original PowerPC or 68K software? Very poorly. Basically Apple just abandoned old software and hoped developers made new versions for new architectures. Some developers did it, most did not.

So unlike you said, they didn't do it.

Lol that's a weird denial, they did arch transitions with emulation of old hardware 3 times. They even did an OS transition though I'd say that was rougher.

They gave publishers time to update their software before dropping support for older CPU designs. Some did and some abandoned their software, like happens sometimes with "simpler" OS updates. I still have a piece of SW that's been updated through from 68k to Intel, haven't looked into ARM yet.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Ryzen 7 7840HS supports 256GB memory whereas Snapdragon supports 64GB at most. For same reason even mentioning Apples similar SOCs in comparison for CPUs that can support much more memory is comparing apples to oranges.

I expect Techspot to figure out something as simple as this.

What? The Apple SOC splits the difference, supporting 128GB. And 64GB is restricting for how many people now? Maybe 1%.

 

[HardReset]

Lol that's a weird denial, they did arch transitions with emulation of old hardware 3 times. They even did an OS transition though I'd say that was rougher.

They gave publishers time to update their software before dropping support for older CPU designs. Some did and some abandoned their software, like happens sometimes with "simpler" OS updates. I still have a piece of SW that's been updated through from 68k to Intel, haven't looked into ARM yet.

And those emulators meant software ran slower with new CPUs. What an achievement. On x86 world we expect new CPUs to run old software faster.

"Updating" software essentially means they abandoned support for old software and expected publishers to do same software again on different architecture. Very far from backwards compatibility. But as usual, Apple gets away things that would cause havoc on PC world.

 

[HardReset]

What? The Apple SOC splits the difference, supporting 128GB. And 64GB is restricting for how many people now? Maybe 1%.

You cannot upgrade memory later when prices have dropped. Unless you buy "enough" right away, you're stuck with less memory forever.

Anyway comparing SOC with integrated memory against SOC with expandable one is like comparing integrated graphics against discrete graphics. Not same thing at all.