In the market for a new Windows machine? You might want to hold out for a little longer. Qualcomm has shared details about its upcoming Snapdragon X Elite chipsets for PCs. The new chips use Oryon CPUs for some of the fastest speeds around. It’ll be a big upgrade for power inside your next desktop or laptop, and Snapdragon X Elite should perform better than most Intel laptops. The tech may even look to rival Apple’s M-series of chips in the latest Macs.
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite series of chips are SoC processors. This means that all the components are on the same board: CPU, GPU, the lot. It means things happen on your machine quicker, as components are closer together. Apple has been using chipsets just like these since it unveiled the M-series with the 2020 MacBook Air. And from these Mac machines, the benefits of SoC silicon are unrivalled, producing some of the fastest speeds around.
Snapdragon’s X Elite series are 4nm processor chips, shrinking things down to cram more in. For the new chips, Qualcomm will use 12-core Oryon CPUs – some of the latest available. This promises some impressive speeds when you start tackling work on machines using the new chipset. Qualcomm is also cramming in a neural processing unit and AI Engine. This is a dedicated bit of hardware designed to process AI tasks on-device. It’s quicker and more efficient, which should boost your performance even more. Senior VP, Don McGuire, describes it as “a quantum leap forward in performance and power efficiency.”
The new X Elite chipsets are more power efficient. Snapdragon reckons you’ll get 4.3GHz speeds and a memory bandwidth of 136 GB/s. It looks like you’ll get 2x better performance than comparable Intel chips, while using 68% less power. Of course, we’ll have to test this when we get our hands on new machines with the X Elite chips. It’ll also be interesting to see how the new processors compare to Apple’s M series.
Looking to get a new machine with Snapdragon’s X Elite chipset? You’ll have to wait a little longer yet. While the chipset is compatible across a range of designs and form factors, manufacturers need to make these new machines first. Keep an eye out throughout 2024 for new computers sporting the X Elite power.
