A brief roundup of Qualcomm Snapdragon X news
Now that there are some specs, development news, and Snapdragon X Elite vs Intel benchmarks from the past couple days to discuss (with the exception noted below), I thought I'd put together a few links for people. I'm curious how people feel about this iteration of technology in an ARM package for development, tinkering, or edge AI applications. And are folks enthused by the possibilities (Windows or otherwise), dislike the price points, or tired of the AI/CoPilot buzz?
New Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Benchmarks Show It's a Serious Contender
Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows is a tiny desktop PC with a focus on AI apps
Debian 12 and Linux upstreaming for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC (January, 2024)
Microsoft is already taking orders for both Surface Pro (11ᵗʰ Edition, $999+) and Surface Laptop (7ᵗʰ Edition, $999+)[1] orders planned for shipping in June. Each can be bought in X Plus or X Elite flavors, though Wikipedia suggests there are several models of the X Elite so I'm curious which flavors we'll see in MS devices.
[1] Note that I linked to the "business" versions of the MS Store listings because they get straight to the point with a tech overview, etc. The "business" versions are listed for $100 more than the consumer versions.
Sharing this in ~comp, but if there's a better place for this then I'm happy to see it moved to a more suitable location. Thanks!
One of the things I absolutely loved about my M1 macbook air was the fact that it didn't have a fan. Unfortunately, after a year of use I decided that MacOS was just not for me, so I sold the macbook. Now I have a lenovo with an i7-1260p that I've power limited to 20/40W for PL1/PL2, which is well below stock limits. The fans still spin up pretty fast sometimes while the chassis gets pretty hot, even while just web browsing or reading a PDF. I could lower it more, but after some testing there's kind of an elbow point between 30-40W where performance starts to really tank, whereas I don't feel like I'm missing much by dropping from 60 to 40W.
Anyway, my thinking is that any competitive windows laptop with an ARM processor either needs to either destroy the competition in performance or really needs to focus on power efficiency, otherwise you might as well just get the x86 processor. Seems like performance is merely on par with x86 competitors, while behind the M3. The exception is "AI" benchmarks, but I don't know what tangible benefits that'll bring. Qualcomm seems to be advertising power efficiency, but I've read that power consumption can go up to almost 100W with this SoC, so I'm not really holding my breath on killer battery life with low fan noise. Based on previous experience with following phone SoC launches, most Qualcomm battery claims are highly exaggerated.
Still happy to see some more competition in this space though. Hopefully more independent benchmarks prove my assumptions wrong. Also hoping MS has worked out more of the kinks with Windows and ARM.
I have a laptop with a 1240P and it's largely the same situation, though I generally don't mind the fan spinning up. The box claimed 10-12 hours of battery life but I'm not anywhere close to that when using Windows. I dual-boot Fedora on it and that gets me around 5 hours of web and YT video usage. I will have to try setting up some power limits on it like you did and see if that helps!
I agree with you on the ARM processor needing to target either massive performance or incredible efficiency. The press release does say that the CPU's multi-threading performance (with no NPU involved) "...leads in performance per watt, matching competitor peak [Intel Core Ultra 7 155H] performance at 60% less power." So I'm sorta hopeful that Qualcomm isn't completely full of shit this time, but we'll find out in June when devices start shipping. It'll be real informative to see how the dev kits perform per watt, too.
fwiw I use Thermald with auto-cpufreq on my NixOS installation, it did make the fan on the Surface Laptop Go 2 it’s installed on quieter and makes less heat. But Thermald is only for Intel afaik. As far as battery goes if I don’t use something that has no gpu/hw acceleration it should last a fair amount of time, but not anywhere as much as advertised. Can’t compare it to Windows because I removed W11 very shortly after I got it.
It's also funny MS claims that their Surface Laptop is 56% faster than an M3 air. I mean, that's a laptop without a fan, using a 2023 SoC, of course it's way faster. My MBP M3 Pro, whilst being 2x more expensive, is probably almost on par with this device.
I could careless about Co-pilot/AI. I am interested in the purported efficiency gains, especially in relation to gaming. The Steam Deck has already proven people's appetite for a device more powerful than a phone and more mobile than a PC. It's a shame that Microsoft seemingly cannot make Windows 10/11 better for touchscreen/portable gaming. It's not a use case I currently care about, but it does at least currently seem to be one possible future for gaming if you believe the rumours.
Before the new Snapdragon processor, I had been considering this which is an older Snapdragon processor but I already knew some of the Windows ARM limitations so I figure it's worth waiting to see how the new Snapdragon Elite pans out.
So essentially I'd like to see the reviews indicate something near what is being marketed and then a cheaper product like the one I linked in that form factor. The Surface Pro is just too expensive for me.