Qualcomm has introduced a new system-on-a-chip in the Snapdragon X series. The new Snapdragon X Plus is a slightly simplified version designed to create more affordable Windows 11 on Arm laptops.
Prior to that, Qualcomm offered Snapdragon X series processors in configurations with 12 (Snapdragon X Elite) or 10 (Snapdragon X Plus) computing cores. Laptops based on these SoCs were sold at a price of $999 and above. The new version of Snapdragon X Plus has 8 CPU cores, but retains the same neural unit with 45 TOPS performance available in the top-end X Elite version. The price of laptops with an 8-core chip will start at $800.
To achieve this lower price point, the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core processor has a less powerful GPU and a slightly lower CPU clock speed. In fact, there are two variants of the 8-core X Plus processor: one with a 1.7 TFLOPS GPU and a slightly more powerful variant with a 2.1 TFLOPS GPU (available in the first half of 2025). For comparison, the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus has a GPU that delivers 3.8 TFLOPS.
Despite some limitations, Qualcomm promises that this budget chip still delivers superior performance, outperforming the Intel Core Ultra 5 125U and AMD Ryzen 8460U in both single-core and multi-core benchmarks. It also stands up to Apple’s M2 processor found in the MacBook Air, providing better multithreaded performance and the ability to output to three external displays instead of one.
Preliminary performance tests of the 8-core Snapdragon X Plus demonstrate in Geekbench 6 the results of 2433 points for the single-core test and 11446 for the multi-core test mode. In Cinebench 24, in the multi-core test, a score of 686 points was obtained – between Intel Core Ultra 5 and 7.
Major manufacturers of Windows laptops, including HP, Dell, Lenovo and Samsung, are ready to ship devices with this new chip starting today.
Source: windowscentral