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  • Qualcomm has some new competition

CES is the biggest computing show of the year, and it's a longstanding tradition that Intel and AMD announce their newest wares there, followed by every OEM's device announcements. Normally, these new chips and devices are a little bit faster than their predecessors, and those improvements add up over a five-year upgrade cycle.

At CES 2024, Intel stole the show a bit thanks to its improvements with Core Ultra, which include a neural processing unit (NPU) and big GPU improvements. These chips are optimized for on-device AI tasks, and while Qualcomm made a splash with its Snapdragon X Elite last year, Intel had two key advantages: It has tons of software partners, and it began shipping well before the Snapdragon X Elite was available.

Not to be outdone, Qualcomm reached out at CES 2024 to show that the Snapdragon X Elite is still worth waiting for. The company allowed me to bring a Core Ultra laptop and benchmark it next to a Snapdragon X Elite reference design. Naturally, I've reviewed both the Acer Swift Go 14 and the HP Spectre x360 14, and Intel had just handed off an Asus Zenbook 14 to me, so I've had experience with the Core Ultra chips already. But how do the two chips compare?

UPDATE: 2024/12/219 10:30 EST BY JOÃO CARRASQUEIRA

Qualcomm has some new competition

As we near the end of 2024, the landscape of mobile processors has changed significantly. Intel has introduced its Lunar Lake laptop processors, which have shown the company can deliver excellent performance while also having great battery life. Additionally, Lunar Lake processors have significantly more powerful GPUs compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, and they also have an NPU with 40TOPS or more,

Meanwhile, Apple has since introduced the M4 processor family for its devices, which we already compared against Lunar Lake and the Snapdragon X Elite across a range of tests. You can read that comparison here.

UPDATE: 2024/05/29 10:15 EST BY RICH WOODS

Copilot+ is here!

We've learned a lot since this article was published back in January. We knew that the NPU in the Snapdragon X Elite is much more powerful than it was in Meteor Lake, but now we know about Copilot+, Microsoft's AI PC initiative.

And Meteor Lake isn't eligible for it. To get Copilot+, you'll need an NPU that gets at least 40 TOPS, and Core Ultra Series 1 doesn't even come close to reaching. If you want an Intel-powered Copilot+ laptop, you'll need one with Lunar Lake, its next-gen Core Ultra processors that are coming later this year.

Snapdragon X Elite PCs are shipping starting June 18, and Lunar Lake laptops should be coming around IFA.

Test units

This isn't the first time that I've benchmarked Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite reference designs. The first time was at the Snapdragon Summit in October, and at the time, I tested it against Apple's M2, Intel 13th Gen CPUs, and Qualcomm's previous generation, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. At the time, Qualcomm actually had two models, one with a 23W system TDP and another with an 80W system TDP. However, at CES, it only brought along the 80W models, which frankly didn't seem fair. Naturally, we'll also include those scores from the 23W machines here.

In total, I ran these tests on the following PCs:

  • Snapdragon X Elite B (23W)
  • Snapdragon X Elite A (80W)
  • HP Spectre x360 14 (Core Ultra 7 155H)
  • Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Core Ultra 7 155H)
  • MacBook Air (M2)

Since running these tests, the Snapdragon X Elite has become widely available, and so have Intel's Lunar Lake processors, which changed the landscape very significantly.

Geekbench 6.2

Geekbench is probably the most common CPU test, so you've likely heard the name. You'll find that both Snapdragon X Elite machines best the Core Ultra in both single- and multi-core.

Geekbench 6.2 results that show the Snapdragon chips pulling just ahead in multi-core and single-core

What's interesting is that when I first wrote about Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks, I said that Qualcomm was well-positioned by being far enough ahead of Intel 13th Gen that Meteor Lake probably wouldn't catch up, but Intel Core Ultra actually got a lower score on single-threaded performance. Intel admits this, too, as it sacrificed that single-core performance for better multi-core.

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench is the newest test of the ones we'll be running, which seeks to mimic real-world CPU usage. It's another CPU test, although Cinebench 2024 now comes with a GPU test. You do need dedicated graphics to run it.

Cinebench 2024 results for the test, which show the Snapdragon chips beating out the others in multi-core

Both of the Intel single-core scores were 100, so the two Snapdragon machines beat them by 24% and 32%. Qualcomm's multi-core performance really blows away the competition, thanks to the 12 powerful cores in the Snapdragon X Elite. The Core Ultra 7 155H is designed differently, of course, using Intel's hybrid technology for six big cores and eight little cores. Single-core performance is about even with the rest, but Snapdragon just blows it away in multi-core.

Wild Life Extreme

Wild Life Extreme is part of the 3DMark suite of tests, but it's one of the few that is truly cross-platform, meaning it supports x86 Windows, Arm64 Windows, and macOS. Most of the 3DMark tests are x86-only. This is also the first test on the list that takes graphics performance into account.

Wild Life Extreme

Once again, both the 23W and 80W units of the Snapdragon X Elite come out ahead. Interestingly, the Asus Zenbook 14 and HP Spectre x360 came in at 33.28 and 34.12FPS, well over 10FPS less than the 80W Snapdragon X Elite unit and 5FPS less than the 23W model.

Aztec Ruins (1080p)

Aztec Ruins is part of GFXBench, and as you can guess from the name, it's about testing graphics performance. The settings are using Vulkan, except in the case of the MacBook Air, which uses Metal.

Aztec Ruins results for this test, which show Snapdragon chips winning out.

Once again, the Snapdragon X Elite comfortably beats out the Intel Core Ultra, this time by over 100FPS. The 80W unit beats it out by over 160FPS.

PCMark 10 Applications

The final test is PCMark 10 Applications, which is the only part of PCMark 10 that runs on Arm because it relies on Office and Edge. It doesn't run on macOS.

PCMark 10 Applications results for this test, showing the Snapdragon X Elite getting beaten out slightly by the Zenbook 14 OLED's Core Ultra 7 155H

This is one test where Qualcomm's hardware fell behind. Indeed, Intel is great at making chips for productivity.

Conclusion

Since we originally ran these tests, things have changed quite a lot. Looking at these benchmarks, it's clear that Intel's main advantage back in January of 2024 was that it was available a few months before Qualcomm made its official debut with the Snapdragon X Elite.

Today, there's no reason to buy a Meteor Lake laptop. Snapdragon X Elite laptops have launched with some great hardware already available, like the Surface Laptop 7, Dell XPS 13, or Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x. Apple has upped the ante with the Apple M4 family of chips which is on pretty much every Mac right now.

And Intel itself has replaced Meteor Lake with Lunar Lake chips, also known as Intel Core Ultra Series 2, which bring huge single-core performance improvements along with a much better GPU and significantly improved efficiency. While those processors aren't on as many laptops just yet, devices like the Dell XPS 13 and Asus Zenbook S 14 are already out there, and they're phenomenal. Meteor Lake now feels more like a stopgap solution, having only been on the market for about 9 months before its successor was introduced.