Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X CPU Benchmarked In PassMark, Single-Thread Performance Faster Than Intel Meteor Lake, Falls Behind Apple & AMD

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite CPU has been benchmarked at PassMark, and it's safe to say that the chip has shown rather interesting results.

Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X CPUs were the hype around Computex, not only because their debut in the industry was unexpected but also because they brought in some serious performance onboard, especially in terms of AI computing (on paper at least). The reviews will have a different story to say with Apple, AMD, & Intel's existing options competing well against the new Snapdragon X chips in both CPU and GPU performance. The gaming performance has also been a mixed bag and we would have given Qualcomm the pass if it wasn't for the huge numbers they had initially promised.

Now, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite X1E84100 CPU has finally appeared on the PassMark benchmark, and the CPU does hold up well against its x86 counterparts (although the numbers are not groundbreaking as Qualcomm showcased), but the situation is a bit different in its own "ARM" camp.

Before we dive into the benchmarks, let's talk about the specifications of the Snapdragon X Elite X1E84100. It features a 12-core and 12-thread count along with a 3.80GHz base clock and a 4.20GHz boost clock.

It's one of the high-end offerings by Qualcomm, and in terms of the single-core score at PassMark, the chip managed to secure 3,895 points, which is a decent score. The chip is comparable to Apple's M2 which had 3,922 points, but as soon as we compare it against AMD's Hawk Point, the performance numbers get slightly underwhelming with the latter scoring almost 4000 points. It does fare well against the Core Ultra 9 185H which scores 3,719 points.

However, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1E84100 CPU is severely behind Apple's M2 Pro and the relatively newer M3 chips, so that's something to consider when you look at "Team ARM". In terms of multi-core scores, the X1E84100 managed to bag in 23,272 points, higher than Apple's "tablet" M4 chip, but yet again way behind the computing counterparts.

Well, PassMark benchmarks do show us a certain part of the power held within the Snapdragon Elite SKU, but it is indeed not the whole picture. The market is more appealing with the "AI side" of things with the Snapdragon X Elite SKUs as well, where they have managed to beat current-gen counterparts from Intel and AMD.

However, one must keep in mind that both Intel and AMD are on the verge of introducing their next-gen chips, Lunar Lake & Strix Point, which are expected to elevate the performance even higher so Snapdragon X CPUs seem to be in a very heated position in the AI PC segment despite being the only Microsoft Copilot+ compliant platform in the market yet.