Snapdragon X Elite: The Good, the Bad, and the Benchmarks (vs Apple Silicon)

Apple is petty, for blocking iTunes. Apple Silicon is ARM based lol.
Silly goose's.
Say hi to the team, miss seeing them. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

eGPU support is gonna be crucial as long as Apple Silicon lacks. Especially for ML.

fan noise is pure stress. I need an absolutely silent computer. There will always be a lack of computing power

Will there be a windows like metal api ? will rendering apps like dvanci and graphics app become faster on these x elite laptops?

I wish there was a single proper mail client available as a native ARM version. Yes, amd64 ones run, but having that one single thing that constantly runs in the background burning CPU cycles on prism is just so inefficient.

What happens when Microsoft has to start supporting both AMD/intel AND ARM chips for the foreseeable future?
As a consumer, how do you know which one to purchase? Yes, you get more performance from ARM and battery life etc. But, intel and AMD aren't going away. And they don't seem to be moving away from x86. As efficient as they can make them. They most likely will not get to the same level of ARM. Maybe more performant but at the cost of heat, and power draw.

Apple has the ability to move away from intel. I don't suspect the same for Microsoft. Its cool now, but at some point. This needs to be cleared up.

All good with Snapdragon X elite. But Qualcomm dev kit is nowhere to be found and it's a crap show. Im unable to get the kit yet and there goes all the efforts to fasten adoptions.

But I suppose the Windows OS is snappier now - ARM build.

Snapdragon X elite laptops don't have better battery life than MacBook Air. Quite the contrary. I don't know where that came from either than offline video playback with PCs that have larger batteries.

Got a look at pricing of Lenovo slim 7x at $1400 same as vivobook 14. Now they are charging 1600$ base model. After adding 32GB Ram and 1TB SSD the cost shot up to $2500 and then bought 8845HS based ThinkPad P14. Not even seeing strix point in India. Well surface lineup will be double so a DoA and like Qualcomm said in 2025 Arm laptop will be available at 800$ or even less just to cleanup their inventories. Bye Bye ARM laptops that cost an arm, leg and more

Linux? 👀

Found this channel since June, when he talked about "Thunderbolt" for 2013 Mac Pro. And, what I like Apart from his accent, the explanation fits me perfectly. Also, I just feel like "Neutral" when watching type of video like this as well 😁😅

I work in the enterprise IT space and this Snapdragon stuff doesn't really move the needle. X86 compatibility is key for us. I view these chips as interesting and something to keep an eye on.

This is one of the most compréhensive and unbiased video on these devices that I have see. So unbiased it will probably tickle some apologetic Apple fans, although most Apple users will probably recognise how good it is.

Really like your video and analysis, but I am an linux user (not way I will buy a Pc with Windows precharged), and is more relevant to me benchmarks and use experinence in this plattform.

I would call past WoA attempts as side-quests rather than any sort of concerted effort. Microsoft waited so long for Intel for a solution but it never came. The Qualcomm X series is the first time WoA can be considered serious.

80% of the big apps are now ARM native, excluding games.

Can you run llm using snapdragon GPU ? Or npu ? Does it run well compared to Nvidia GPU ?

Sell Intel shares. Everyone will be moving to arm laptop within 10 years

underated video

I do believe arm will replace x86, but for now compatibility is still not good enough for professional work of mostly any kind, only for home use, for now AMD is leading the pack, excelent battery life and excellent performance with 100% compatibility

It has taken me three years to work out why Apple Silicon laptops are unsuitable for most users. The problem is that most specialised apps are not available for either Intel or Apple Silicon Macs. They are usually available for x86 Linux but are not available for Macs. I work as a contract embedded software development engineer and most of the apps that I use are unavailable for Macs. I talked to a civil engineer who told me that similarly no civil engineering design apps are available for Macs. From reviews it seems to me that Apple Silicon Macs are only really useful for niche tasks such as video editing.

I did initially think that Rosetta enabled windows x86 apps work on Apple Silicon but discovered that it can only be used to run MacOS x86 apps on Apple Silicon. Crossover can allow you to run x86 windows apps on Apple Silicon but worryingly Apple say that this is only there to allow software suppliers to port their apps to Macs and so I suspect that Apple will eventually place limits on what windows apps work on Apple Silicon.

There are no such problems with windows 11 on arm where apps can easily be recompiled to generate real arm code or run transparently under emulation.

There is no perfect OS but Windows turned into a user data miner. Apple makes it conveniant to use their cloud stuff, but they don't push it onto you. It feels like want's to eat the fruit and keep it. I wounder if they tested Windows 11 on ARM properly?

Zen 5 literally makes this whole launch useless. No compatibility issues while delivering comparable performance and battery life. And don't call this their first outing, Qualcomm has been producing chips for various Windows devices for years now since 2012 actually. I am however interested in seeing how they perform on Linux, Windows 11 is utter rubbish.

I don't want to make the sheeps sad but, the ARM revolution started with Microsoft back in 2012 when they released Windows on ARM with Nvidia Tegra Chips. Apple just did as usual, copied, made a loooot of noise, and acted like if that was their idea

finally waited years for it

you never mentioned efficiency and battery life for each, X Elite is far worse

Very interesting and informative video👌 I daily drive my Dell XPS with snapdragon as it's smoother than even my top-spec Asus Proart P16 with AMD Ryzen Ai 9 hx370. Only thing that's not working for me is VMware Workstation and a USB Serial adapter. Everything else just flies😊

I'm just waiting for Linux support. Apple and Microsoft are both terrible.

U should have used the 80 variant bcs it's close to m3

Yes, we need competition , but one done on equal terms as much as possible .
Maybe you guys , all you need to know is what is latest product from x company
and what is latest product from y company and then you do the comparison.

But this has never been enough for me .
Comparing the snapdragon x-elite(base model) with apple M3,
is exactly like comparing apple M2 vs apple M3 and then say
"oh, look at the work on M3 , it's for sure a more efficient silicon".
But , my dear , of course it is , of course it is.
But where is the comparison of snapdragon x-elite vs apple M2 vs amd ai 9 370?
This is a fair comparison , and if you don't get why, I would rather never have
an IT literacy even if a deep and extensive one, if I can't get why this comparison
is essential and as fair as it can be.

Regarding the software compatibility .Yes Microsoft had a ton of time to make it work, it could have
done a much better job out of this. But you can't compare the sterilised limited apple world
with the all-inclusive global windows world. Not the same at all.

Again software compatibility is important , but these machines were ready for sales, just before
apple M3 is going to be out of market and replaced by M4. If they really wanted to have a chance ,
they should strive to sell them at the same time when apple M2 came online, and if you don't
understand why, you really don't need any analysis. Just go and buy the cheapest machine that can
run your apps the fastest and runs for the longest time.

I rarely comment, but I really like your measured, thoughtful take on this topic. Subscribed.

The release of M1 was a miracle: I had no issues. As soon as the M1max arrived, I had a big for 2 months, but since then: no (notice) troubles at all. The same after M2 Ultra 192GB arrived. No noticeable troubles.

for a first time product, this thing is great

adreno supposedly is based on old radeon architecture, see how bad it does tells me they should rename that gpu or remove it and put a real radeon

FYI: Thunderbolt 3 has been offered on a number of AMD cpu hosting motherboards for 5+ years, and obviously Apple silicon, and Thunderbolt 4 is part of the USB4 spec, so not just an INTEL thing. You also missed "Linux 6.10 Adds eDP/DisplayPort Support For The Snapdragon X Elite", so if you have an eGPU and fancy dual booting one of the machines into an unstable Linux distribution there may be support for NVIDIA GPU's, at least, as there are drivers that are buildable from source.

Apple managed the transition from x86 to arm so well. I was able to transfer my complete workflow on my M1 Max and even under Rosetta2 everything was running fast and well. I wish II could upgrade my Windows laptop too but I don’t think that Windows on Arm will reach this level of reliability soon. I also need the gpu power of at least a Silicon Max and the Snapdragon Chips have nothing to offer in this category.

If they want Windows on ARM to take off they need to make the all day battery the focus of the marketing rather than all this AI nonsense.

Due to the snapdragons having a fan to cool the cpu, wouldn’t the MacBook Pro M1 have been more of an apples to apples comparison instead of an MacBook Air M1?

The issue is running Linux on both Apple and Qualcomm

I hear from other reviewers about how disappointing performance is from this chip, but judging from these tests I just don't see it. (Yeah, don't game on them, but that's not the market for them).

Its an absolute joy to listen to a tech video with no effing music, thanks.

bungled lol. wintel till windows dies.

As a huge open source advocate, I have huge hopes for RISC V. At the moment I'm using a Ryzen 7 8040u, and it's pretty good with Linux (fast, runs relatively cool, good battery life, excellent iGPU performance). I still have an "old" 14 inch ThinkPad with a Ryzen 7 5850u, and that's still pretty good today (for what I use it for, which is mostly Linux stuff, lots of compiling etc...). Personally, I don't need the "latest and greatest" running at a gazillion gigahertz. The most important things for me on a laptop is good battery life, good keyboard, reasonable display, "good enough" performance.

It's not true that the snapdragons outperform the MacBook Air in battery life! Maybe with video playback, it seems the qualcomm codecs are more efficient than Apple. But the mere fact that THERE IS NO FAN in the macbook air makes it virtually impossible for the snapdragon CPUs to outlast the macbook air in battery life!

I bought the Lenovo Slim 7x and it's honestly the best Windows laptop I've ever owned. The screen is stunning, keyboard is flawless, battery life is impressive, there is virtually no fan noise, and the build quality is excellent. I'm pleased Lenovo and Microsoft are finally bringing the heat on Apple.

1. Hardware and software teams inevitably work on their own piece of the puzzle of performance and efficiency with a degree of autonomy from one another. Yes, software people on a hardware team and vice versa is a positive development but that doesn't erase the distinction between teams it just softens some of the lines of demarcation.

2. The bigger problem is the existence of unrealised potential of hardware when yoked to software that for whatever reason impairs the ability of hardware to put on its best performance. The codevelopment of Apple hardware and software tends to overcome that problem - there is no unrealised potential in Apple hardware. But, we already know that the X Elite benchmarks better on Linux than on Windows. That shows the existence of such unrealised potential and it shows the need for further optimisation of the software. Has Microsoft got something better in the pipeline? Probably not, but at least it is good to know that more is available from the X Elite if only you use Linux.

Very in-depth review analysis!

I just switch to a Snapdragon x Plus machine - it replaces my Notebook with the i7 13th Gen. In Real Life I doesn't notice any performance gaps. Lightroom works fast, watching 4K Videos works well, my printer and all my external drives works without any issues. I also try out Capture One (emulated). It works and is fine, but it performs better on my M2 Mac. What else? Office and browsing in the web is great.

Im very happy with my snapdragon x elite. It runs forever, super smooth! The most mac feeling windows laptop ive had.

What I’ve have gotten is that’s the cpu performance isn’t that bad its mainly driver and app support and what I have been seeing most of the app support are games that generally perform poorly or just crash out due to shitty display drivers for windows. I really feel that Qualcomm could have gotten more help with Microsoft on this or just worked with Microsoft on the first gen elite chips at least until they got the graphics’s drivers sorted.

Oh yeah you mean the developer kit they made developers return at their cost to get shredded before the m1’s came out…. lol not the best example there. Considering you had to pay apple what was like 500 dollars on top of the developer subscription and you couldn’t even keep the device rofl nor did you get your 500 dollars back rofl. So you pretty much pay 599 to get access to a box with an A12x chip to use for like was 6-8 months and had to send it back to apple.