Qualcomm Announces New Windows PC Chip That’s Better Than Apple’s M3

Even before the launch of Snapdragon

The news leaked earlier this month and here is the official release. Qualcomm is introducing the Snapdragon Plus SoC, a new chip for Windows PCs. Like the Snapdragon X Elite, already unveiled in October last year, this chip is based on the new Oryon architecture and promises a lot.

More affordable processor

Qualcomm promised us that its range of chips would be much less complex than the full catalogs of AMD and Intel with their variations of H, U, HX, Y, etc. On Qualcomm’s side, we want to keep things simple for two main families: Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus.

The Snapdragon X Plus includes a 10-core processor clocked at up to 3.4 GHz, compared to the Snapdragon’s 12 cores. The Adreno GPU offers 3.8 teraflops of graphics power (compared to the X Elite’s 4.6), but the NPU remains unchanged, still delivering 45 TOPS performance. We also retain LPDDR5x RAM and 4nm manufacturing process from TSMC. Qualcomm obliges, we also find a modem compatible with Wi-Fi 7 and 5G.

Despite the drop in performance compared to Snapdragon Remember that the Apple chip only combines 4 high-performance cores and 4 power-saving cores. In other words, it’s encouraging to see that Qualcomm’s 10-core processor performs better than Apple’s hybrid 8-core processor.

Facing more direct competition, Qualcomm promises its Snapdragon X Plus will deliver the same level of performance as an Intel Core Ultra 7 144H or AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS while consuming only half the power. Otherwise, with equivalent consumption, Qualcomm promises a 37% performance increase compared to competitors.

This chip should find its way into a new line of machines planned for this summer, with a commercial launch at the same time as the Snapdragon X Elite. Qualcomm has not announced the expected price of PCs equipped with this chip.