Snapdragon Elite X: next installment of chipset for the laptop department
The latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile chip is poised to power the newest flagship Android smartphones and tablets. At the same time, Qualcomm has also unveiled its next-generation high-end chip tailored for ARM-based architecture for Windows laptops – the Snapdragon X Elite. With this latest System-on-Chip (SoC), Qualcomm aims to capture a larger portion of the PC chipset market, emphasizing both performance and efficiency.
Manufactured on a 4nm process node, the Snapdragon X Elite boasts 12 high-performance Oryon cores clocked at 3.8 GHz, with single and dual-core boosts reaching up to 4.3 GHz. Qualcomm claims that its new CPU matches the multi-threaded performance of competing Intel 13th gen CPUs while consuming 68% less power. Comparisons are also drawn with Apple’s ARM-based M2 chip, with the Snapdragon X Elite boasting 50% faster peak multi-threaded performance.
On the graphics front, the X Elite integrates an Adreno GPU rated at 4.6 TFLOPs, supporting DirectX 12 API. It can accommodate up to 3 external UHD monitors at 60Hz. Video editors will benefit from the Adreno video processing unit (VPU), supporting 4K60 10-bit encodes and decodes for various file formats.
Additionally, Qualcomm has incorporated a Hexagon NPU capable of 45 Tera operations per second (TOPs), excelling at Generative AI tasks. The Snapdragon X Elite can handle over 13 billion parameters running on the device and generate 30 tokens per second.
For memory, the chip supports LPDDR5x RAM with up to 136 GB/s memory bandwidth and 42MB total cache, alongside PCIe Gen4 or UFS 4.0 storage. Connectivity-wise, the Snapdragon X Elite is equipped with a FastConnect 7800 System supporting Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, as well as a Snapdragon X65 5G modem for cellular connectivity with peak download speeds of up to 10 Gbps.
Furthermore, the Snapdragon X Elite supports lossless audio playback thanks to the Qualcomm Aqstic DAC. It features the Qualcomm Spectra image signal processor (ISP) with support for up to 36MP dual cameras and 4K HDR video capture.
[Image Source: GSMArena]
