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

Is this the "M1 Moment" for Windows? I've been taking a detailed look at the new Snapdragon X Elite chips from Qualcomm, and trying out Windows on ARM. Featuring the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and the ASUS Vivobook S - are these laptops ready for the mainstream? What are the benchmarks like, and how do they compare to Apple Silicon? What's the real-world experience?

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CHAPTERS
00:00 An "M1 moment" for PCs?
00:54 Launch issues & Microsoft failures
05:02 AI promises and confusion
06:34 Problems with reviewing first-gen tech
07:52 Snapdragon X Elite overview
09:06 Two X Elite laptops (and a MacBook Air)
09:44 Geekbench 6 CPU benchmarks
11:52 Windows power and performance settings
13:16 Cinebench 2024 benchmarks & thermal differences
15:01 PC and Mac fans should celebrate
15:54 Pricing & value for money
16:41 Detailed reviews and an unbiased perspective
17:21 First generation problems
18:12 Is X Elite ready for mainstream users? My experience.
19:43 App support
20:03 Affinity Photo 2 benchmarks
20:27 Adreno GPU performance
21:57 USB and Thunderbolt performance
23:52 eGPU support?
24:30 Conclusions

#windows #snapdragon #qualcomm

[petr]

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

[JaredTNewall]

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

[MeinDeutschkurs]

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.

[_Digitalguy]

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.

[marksaxon]

Even though I'm mainly a Mac user (except for my Windows gaming desktop), I think this is great stuff. Having competition benefits everyone. I put my wife's M2 Air through my Logic Pro torture tests and that thing is amazing. Did get a little warm but never slowed down. My company has a Snapdragon test unit and we are putting it through the paces now. Intel should be scared.

[auntcleo]

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.

[Technocrat.]

Great video.
The SD X Elite is an ARM server soc.
It was designed to take up to 80 watts of sustained input power.
Running it at full power, would kick Apple's butt.
But alas, you would need desktop cooling/water and would not be battery device friendly lol.
😂

[danielschumacher]

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.

[AndrewRoberts]

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.

[martin-samsoe]

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😊

[ajcroteau]

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?

[RootSystemHash]

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

[levelupwithsam]

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.

[Rasenschneider]

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

[froschfreak]

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.

[gummibando]

The X Elite has 12 performance cores vs. 4 on the M3.
This has likely a much bigger influence on multi-core performance than thermal throttling.

[adinnugroho]

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 😁😅

[billymania]

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.

[ed.puckett]

Thank you for this thoughtful comparison.

[chrisgea]

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.