Snapdragon X Elite Windows Laptops to Deliver More Performance than Apple M3 MacBook Air, Sources Say

[Tsing]

A round of new Arm-powered Windows laptops that feature Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite CPUs are on the horizon, and they happen to be powerful enough to beat Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air not only in terms of CPU performance, but also AI-accelerated tasks, according to sources close with Microsoft.

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[Grimlakin]

I would love to see some 3rd party results for this.

On that front are you guys putting together some sort of AI test suite for these newest CPU's?

 

[Brian_B]

Hmm.

So one thing Apple figured out - it’s not about having the fastest.

I have an M1 MacBook, and while it’s plenty fast enough for what I do - that isn’t what makes me like it. There are plenty of faster options if speed were the top priority.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I would love to see some 3rd party results for this.

On that front are you guys putting together some sort of AI test suite for these newest CPU's?

I think that's a good question and it would really be @David_Schroth to give the best answer.

 

[David_Schroth]

I think that's a good question and it would really be @David_Schroth to give the best answer.

UL, the owners of PCMark, have an AI benchmark that might fit the bill here (we'll probably have access to it). Given that both next gen AMD and Intel desktop chipperies will have "AI" capabilities, I'm guessing @Brent_Justice will include this in the CPU reviews of the next gen chippries...

 

[Grimlakin]

I have a laptop with a 155h if you want me to give it a try.

that's one of the Intel Core Ultra CPU's.

 

[Brent_Justice]

UL, the owners of PCMark, have an AI benchmark that might fit the bill here (we'll probably have access to it). Given that both next gen AMD and Intel desktop chipperies will have "AI" capabilities, I'm guessing @Brent_Justice will include this in the CPU reviews of the next gen chippries...

Good idea, I have downloaded our copy of UL Procyon, and they have indeed updated it with the two latest AI benchmark tools now, which weren't there before. I checked it out, it appears that one of the benchmarks is for GPU and the other lets you switch and test between GPU and CPU. It looks like I'll have to use the AI Computer Vision Benchmark, which uses the Windows ML API on the CPU. The AI Image Generation Benchmark only seems to provide GPU testing with different LLMs. In the AI Computer Vision Benchmark, you can test Float32, Float16 and Integer, so I'll have to figure out which is more relevant. Once I figure it out, and the data it provides, I'll figure out how to graph it, and then I should be able to use it in upcoming Zen5 launch.

I wasn't using Procyon previously because it requires you own licenses for the apps it tests, for like content creation, and office programs, and such, so I'd have to have separate licenses for software for the benchmarking PC, and that gets expensive, but thankfully the two new AI benchmarks do not require extra software, all the benchmarking and LLMs seem to be included, so I'm able to use that part of it.