Military Snapdragon X Plus will bring ARM to Windows laptops to beat Apple

Announced today, Snapdragon X Plus is based on the same Oryon CPU as Snapdragon X Elite, just with a bit less power. The chip has 10 cores to the Elite's 12, and is also clocked down from the Elite's 3.8GHz to 3.4GHz.

In a multi-threaded CPU benchmark, Snapdragon X Plus fell about 2,000 points lower than the Snapdragon X Elite, but still managed to outdo Apple's M3 chip by about 10%. It's also still considerably more power efficient compared to traditional x86 chips, using approximately 54% less power at peak performance compared to Intel Core Ultra 7155H.

Qualcomm explains:

Snapdragon X Plus features the state-of-the-art Qualcomm Oryon CPU, a custom-integrated processor that delivers up to 37% faster CPU performance compared to competitors, while consuming up to 54% less power. This remarkable advancement in CPU performance sets a new standard in mobile computing, enabling users to accomplish more with greater efficiency.

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Snapdragon X Plus also matches the Elite on NPU performance, which should be a big boost as "AI PCs" continue to be a big focus on Windows