How Snapdragon X-series chips perform against Apple’s M3 in benchmark tests
Snapdragon has become the newest entrant in the PC processor space with its Snapdragon X-series chipsets. The company’s integrated SoC inside computers is now a necessary classifier for a device to be labeled as Copilot+ PCs, which is another terminology given by Microsoft for AI-powered PCs. However, this is merely marketing nomenclature that doesn’t have much to do with the chipsets’ overall performance. A new report has now benchmarked the Snapdragon X-series chipsets to find out how they fare against chips from Apple, Intel, and AMD.
Snapdragon X-series chips reportedly outperform Apple’s M3 chipset
Extensive benchmark tests Benchmark tests conducted by The Verge show that the Snapdragon X Elite chipsets are 2-3 percent faster in single-core performance than Apple’s M2 Max chips that power the company’s 2023 MacBook Pro model. These benchmark tests were conducted on Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024, as they run on all of the company’s processors, the publication said.
The Snapdragon SoC is also said to have outperformed Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H and the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processors by 24 percent and 17 percent respectively. However, when compared to the Apple M3 chipsets, the Cupertino-based tech giant is said to lead the race in The Verge’s single-core benchmark tests.
The Snapdragon X-series chipsets performed noticeably well in CPU multi-core performance benchmarks, according to the publication. However, Apple’s M2 Max and M3 Max were able to outperform them, thanks to a higher core count (Apple’s M3 Max has 16 cores versus up to 12 cores on its Snapdragon X-series counterpart).
On the other hand, the 12-core Apple M2 Max chipset is said to offer marginally faster performance compared to the top-tier Snapdragon X Elite chips in the Cinebench 2024 benchmark test.
Snapdragon X Elite series GPU performance reportedly lags behind competitors
GPU performance is an important consideration if users plan to run resource-intensive games or apps. According to the report, this is one area where the Snapdragon X-series chipsets lag behind their Apple, Intel, and AMD counterparts.
In the Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL) benchmark test, the publication found that the highest score for Snapdragon X Elite chips with Qualcomm Adreno GPU was 24,004 points in the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
On the other hand, the AMD Radeon 780M GPU in the Acer Swift Go 14 scored AMD 29,199 and the Intel Arc GPU in the MSI Prestige 16 Evo scored 34,528. The leader in this category was the Apple M3 Max in the MacBook Pro 16 Late 2023 with a score of 91,480.
Snapdragon X-series could offer competitive battery life
Battery life is another important metric for chipset performance. It tests the overall optimization of the SoC inside the device. The publication found that Snapdragon-powered laptops offered an average of 14 to 16 hours of battery life. However, none could match the 18 hours offered by the M3 MacBook Air.
Interestingly, AMD and Intel performed even worse than Snapdragon in this area. The only exception was reportedly the Intel-powered Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Ultra, which managed to last just over 14 hours on a single charge.
Based on these statistics, it’s fair to say that while the Snapdragon X-series chipsets aren’t the clear winners in benchmark tests, they still offer better CPU and GPU performance and longer battery life than previous Arm-based Windows laptops.
Interestingly, Snapdragon laptops are relatively cheaper in the US than Apple, Intel and AMD. However, we don’t know how much these laptops will cost in India.
In a recent conversation with Gadgets 360, Don McGuire, Chief Marketing Officer at Qualcomm said, “We have been working closely with Microsoft over the last three to four years to build the Snapdragon X-series chipsets. The new chipsets deliver high performance across CPU, GPU and NPU. These [Snapdragon chipset-powered] AI PCs will be able to offer better video conferencing capabilities, overall performance, battery life, and AI performance.”
