Snapdragon X Plus: Qualcomm’s entry level laptop chip may be faster than the Apple M3

Back in October during their Snapdragon Summit event, Qualcomm finally lifted the veil on Snapdragon X Elite, their most powerful PC processor ever. While we wait for actual finished products powered by Snapdragon X Elite though, Qualcomm has now also announced Snapdragon X Plus, their entry level PC processor that sits below the Snapdragon X Elite.

Specifically, there will be at least one Snapdragon X Plus processor that is positioned below three Snapdragon X Elite tier SKUs; you can perhaps think of it like Intel Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 7 tiers. The Snapdragon X Plus that Qualcomm announced will feature 10 Qualcomm Oryon CPU cores, all rated for a maximum all core boost of 3.4GHz with 42MB of total cache. The Snapdragon X Plus also packs an Adreno GPU with 3.8 TFLOPs of performance, a Hexagon NPU with 45 TOPS of performance and support for up to 8448MHz LPDDR5X memory.

In total, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series platform will tentatively feature four processor models, with the aforementioned Snapdragon X Plus as the base with three more Snapdragon X Elite processors above it. We were told during the Snapdragon Summit event that the Snapdragon X Elite chips will feature 12 Oryon cores, with up to 3.8GHz in all core boosts and dual core boosts of up to 4.3GHz. This time, we have more details about the three Snapdragon X Elite chips, as well as the naming scheme that Qualcomm has employed to help users differentiate them.

As you can see in the table above, the Snapdragon X Plus chip announced today will be called the Snapdragon X1P-64-100. The top of the line Snapdragon X Elite with 12 cores, all core boosts of up to 3.8GHz, dual core boosts of up to 4.2GHz and an Adreno GPU with 4.6 TFLOPs of performance will be called Snapdargon X1E-84-100. There’s also the Snapdragon X1E-80-100 that has lower clock top all core and dual core boost speeds and a slower GPU, while the Snapdragon X1E-78-100 loses the ability for higher dual core boosts altogether, just like the Snapdragon X1P-64-100.

For users to tell it apart, the Snapdragon X part basically tells you it’s part of the Snapdragon X series brand, while the number after that is the generation; this time it’s all numbered 1 as its the first generation of Snapdragon X series chips. The alphabet after that let’s you know if it’s Elite or Plus tier, while the next pair of numbers tells you the specific SKU (higher is better). Lastly, the final three digits is another variant marker to differentiate them further.

As for how well the new Snapdragon X Plus stacks up against both the Snapdragon X Elite and its rivals from the likes of Intel, AMD and Apple, Qualcomm claims that you can expect it to perform better than them in multi-threaded CPU workloads. You should take their claims with a pinch of salt of course, but things do look quite good, with the Snapdragon X Plus supposedly 10% faster than the Apple M3, while matching the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H’s performance with 54% less power. Qualcomm curiously didn’t showcase it’s single-core performance though, which is likely hampered by the fact that the Snapdragon X Plus and the base model Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 don’t feature dual core boost speeds.

In any case, Qualcomm says that their OEM partners are set to launch PCs powered by both the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors some time in mid-2024. You can expect names such as Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Honor and Microsoft just to name a few that will be adopting Qualcomm’s exciting new processor later this year.

Related reading

• Snapdragon X Elite: This is Qualcomm’s most powerful processor for PC ever
• Here are all the brands who will be launching a Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptop in 2024
• Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks sees it beat the Intel Core i7-13800H, AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS