Snapdragon X Elite Reviews

[Mesai]

How long before other ARM chips venders start making chips for laptops/desktop. Would be good to have competition driving performance up and price down. Also, not a fan of Qualcomm so would avoid anything from them.

Apparently AMD are looking into it. Would benefit them in the server space as well although the likes of Amazon might prefer to stick with their in-house chip.

 

[Mesai]

Please book the following dates in your diary for the creation of your Buyer's Remorse threads:

Mid-July (Zen 5)
Mid-Sept (Lunar Lake)
Mid-Oct (Apple M4 Macbook Pro & Air)
Mid-Oct (Arrow Lake)

Why though? The MB is the only actual competitor when it comes to on-battery performance, and those are going to be way more expensive, especially when you have to pay £200 for the privilege of having at least 16GB of RAM.

 

[Mesai]

I think Lunar Lake will surprise you.

Maybe, but Intel talk up their products every year and they’re never there.

Their latest mobile chips are an improvement in terms of efficiency. x86 is inherently less efficient so it’ll take a lot to compete with ARM in that space.

 

[Mesai]

Have any of the reviews covered ARM support and situation for these chips on GNU/Linux operating systems?

Qualcomm will be adding drivers to the kernel but as mentioned above, works fine in WSL.

 

[Mesai]

Is it though? This is just a myth that keeps being regurgitated.

It takes x86 more instructions to perform a task. How the specific CPU architecture manages it is a different story, which is where the likes of AMD or Intel can close the gap.

Possible that some instructions are slower on ARM but for general use Apple have already proven it’s the better option. Outside of gaming, and assuming they don’t use some obscure software with no native build, there’s no real need for the general consumer to buy x86.

 

[Mesai]

That’s not true. ARM uses a much simpler ISA, so if anything, it will be the exact oversite of that. This is why x86 uses more power, it must support a much larger instruction set. Having the extra instructions does increase performance though.

Yea sorry, meant x86 has a richer ISA whereas ARM uses a simplified and probably less flexible ISA, so there would be cases where a set of ARM instructions is less efficient, but the physical advantage allows it to use less power and generate less heat.

 

[Mesai]

for a first gen product they are very impressive

just hope qualcomm dont do qualcomm things and get complacement, they need to really carry on this trend and keep on building on this architecture


all we need now is windows to improve...

We'll know a bit more once all of the drivers and Windows itself is in a less beta state as that would reveal any major flaws.

So far it seems like a really good attempt - hopefully they're more of an AMD, who seem to have a clear vision and roadmap for their Zen platform, and less of an Intel.

 

[Mesai]

So essentially the Snapdragon is almost on the exact same power/performance curve as Intel and AMD's offerings



And essentially depending on the implementation by the manufacturer, the efficiency can end up being exactly the same as AMD/Intel Laptops

Reviews based on day-to-day/real usage show a different picture, especially on-battery.

I mean his review shows better or equal performance, then says they are quieter and cooler than equivalent Intel and AMD laptops. These are also newly released products so no doubt they'll improve over time.

Also, how does the M3 Pro have half the PPW of the base M3 with only 3 more cores?

 

[Mesai]

I wonder how well ARM SoCs will do when they lose their node advantage. Apple and others have enjoyed TSMC and other's advanced nodes but it's slowing down and bring desktop more in line with mobile parts. TSMCs is rumoured to now be behind Intel in the development of under 3nm nodes and Samsung's 3nm node is rumoured to be in trouble too https://wccftech.com/samsung-3nm-gaa-yields-less-than-20-percent-bad-news-for-exynos-2500/

I think Intel got dibs on the new machines from that one company who makes them, so with their new sites coming online and the fab advantage, they should be in a position to produce some interesting tech and at scale.

I will, however, remain sceptical until Intel actually deliver.

 

[Mesai]

Can you get Slack and Skype working?

Slack has Windows for ARM in beta. Doubt Skype does though.

 

[Mesai]

Been looking at a new laptop and was really intrigued by these. Around 1k can get an Apple M1 Pro (refurb) which seems to lag a little behind the Elite on benchmarks but Apple Silicon has had a few years head start to get apps up to date etc.

Basically comes down to checking what apps you use and how many of them are native. You should expect any generally relevant and modern software to get a native build at some point.

The main thing I like about Snapdragon laptops is the extra RAM. I couldn’t stomach an 8GB machine.