Chipmaker Qualcomm has claimed that its new Snapdragon X Elite PC processor is 21% faster than Apple's latest M3 chip in multi-core performance, although questions remain about its thermal profile.
Demoing PCs with the new chipset, the San Diego manufacturer told Digital Trends that the Snapdragon X Elite records a multi-core Geekbench score of 15,300, whereas Apple's M3 obtains a score of 12,154. What Qualcomm did not mention however is the Snapdragon-powered machine's power consumption as a benchmarking vector, which is an important indicator of efficiency performance.
Qualcomm's upcoming range of 2024 Windows PCs are expected to be offered in different thermal design profiles. The performance-focused 80W profile runs faster but generates more heat and requires active cooling (fans), while the efficiency-focused 23W profile is made to be used in thinner laptops with passive cooling systems. For comparison, Apple's base M3 MacBook Pro houses a single fan, similar to the discontinued 13-inch MacBook Pro, but the M3 Pro and M3 Max use dual-fan designs to allow the additional cores to reach maximum performance under load.
The Snapdragon X Elite was announced in late October, just before Apple announced its new MacBook Pro lineup powered by M3 series chips. Despite the claims of better performance offered by the Elite chip over Apple silicon, Qualcomm conceded that "hardware... is the only thing we can control," and therefore the user experience between the rival machines is "not going to be the same," because "they're running macOS and we're running Windows."
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Thermal Profile is important. Qualcomm's chip is likely missing many of the other GPU optimizations and features that Apple's M3 chip family supports, plus they are comparing it to the base M3 chip, not the M3 Pro, M3 Max, or the soon to be released M3 Ultra for performance. And what about Apple's built in GPUs, Media Encoders, Neural Engine, and other custom chip features on Apple's M3 series of chips, that may be missing on Qualcomm's chip? They are comparing Apples to Oranges!
