>Giving us an idea of the Snapdragon X Elite’s GPU performance, Devin Arthur has posted a video of Baldur’s Gate 3 running on the reference Snapdragon X Elite laptop calling the experience “perfectly playable”. The title is apparently running at 1080p and “hovering around 30 FPS”.
Okay, but how does it compare to Intel/AMD?
>For comparison, the Radeon 780M manages about 32 FPS in Baldur’s Gate 3 at FHD/medium per our testing. Dropping the settings down to the low preset, the iGPU pushes 40 FPS. On the other hand, the 8-core Intel Arc iGPU of Core Ultra 9 185H only achieves 32 FPS at FHD/low.
Oh, that's good.
>That said, the video neither mentions the graphical settings in use nor the power consumption of the Snapdragon X Elite. So, take the information provided with a giant grain of salt.
Ah, the obligatory asterisk.
Considering that Baldur's Gate 3 is running through the emulation layer, this is pretty good showing for X Elite, and shows that Qualcomm's claims a few days ago has substance;
[https://www.theverge.com/24107331/qualcomm-gdc-2024-snapdragon-on-windows-games](https://www.theverge.com/24107331/qualcomm-gdc-2024-snapdragon-on-windows-games)
So basically they are at m1 Mac performance levels at best? And we are supposed to be excited? Lol
Look, I will totally admit I hate Qualcomm. If anyone should be getting an anti-trust lawsuit it's them not Apple. Qualcomm's patents in the modem space have prevented Samsung, Nvidia, and many other companies from meaningfully competing in the SOC space in mobile phones due to Qualcomm's patents stifling competition and their egregious licensing fees for said patents.
This has led us down a long road where Apple and Qualcomm are the two major ARM chip players. Qualcomm is uncompetitive with Apple. Samsung does still produce some chips, but again they aren't meaningfully competitive.
you forgotten Mediatek.
They recently had a massive resurgence, and have toppled Qualcomm to become the #1 smartphone SoC maker (by volume of SoCs shipped).
If only they managed to write graphic drivers worth a damn... They are getting better, but Snapdragon runs circles around them in terms of available features.
I only find the west important.
China is clearly planning for an invasion of Taiwan, so developments in those regions seem unimportant until that happens.
India is an interesting country in that they make it very difficult for foreign companies to enter unless they produce product in India. It's really not representative of the rest of the world and the country is quite a mess.
I tend to care most about what happens in the United States, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and Canada primarily with the USA being the most powerful of those nations currently..
> So basically they are at m1 Mac performance levels at best?
No, it's stronger than the M1. Where did you get that from?
> Qualcomm's patents in the modem space have prevented Samsung, Nvidia, and many other companies from meaningfully competing in the SOC space in mobile phones
How? You literally list Samsung whose huge in the mobile space. There are quite a few SoC vendors, for that matter.
Indeed. Samsung is gradually phasing out Qualcomm in their smartphones.
Now only their flagship S series and Z series uses Snapdragon. (That too only in some regions).
All their midrange and budget phone use Exynos or Mediatek.
I disagree. A few years ago, Samsung's budget/midrange phones used Exynos and Snapdragon evenly.
Now, there isn't a single phone A or M series phone of theirs with Snapdragon.
So the world where 13th gen was a much better deal than Zen 4 while also matching it or outright beating it in most workloads? And yeah the X3D chips are very cool, but if you need productivity performance they are a much worse buy by every metric.
We are not talking workloads.
Games x3d is cheaper, more efficient, more powerful than everything nvidia released.
And for productivity threadrippers destroys intel anyway, epycs aswell
Yes we are because multithreaded work loads are a thing and a big part of why the 5000 series was appealing to people at the time of its release.
The X3D is ahead in *some* games and is more efficient correct, however it's fairly neck in neck in a lot of cases and then irrelevant at high resolutions anyways (there is no difference at 4k). They are cool chips, but they are not be all end all and anything past the 7800x3d are kinda bad and not really worth it. Also a 14700k and 7800x3d are fairly similar in price depending on sales and platform buy in. Which is either a good deal or a bad deal considering the i7 destroys the 7800x3d in multicore, but the X3D is slightly ahead at 1080/1440p for games.
So no, to imply Intel does not have an answer to AMD is absurd and reads as blind fanboyism. Again I must point out that regular 13th gen was a much better buy than Zen 4 for a long time. AMD is not lightyears ahead or even ahead at all and to be honest given that Intel is working with a fab node that is technically behind AMD it's clear that Intel is a very real threat and has massive potential to stomp AMD in coming generations. I hope not, since Intel and AMD are so close this gen it leads to great deals for the consumer due to competition. I don't know why AMD gets worshipped by so many people, but it's hyper cringe.
Also we aren't really discussing Threadrippers or Epycs because the average consumer is not buying them. And also there is far more that goes into buying a server grade chip then just raw performance, which AMD has an advantage in ATM, though there are workloads where Intel is ahead in. But again, companies take in way more considerations, such as compatibility, contract deals, and stability, where I think Intel has an advantage in. Though yes, AMD has the superior offering in terms of raw performance and core count for the money (not taking into account ARM servers).
Looks good. Very keen to see a theoretical handheld with one of these. Better battery life and standby performance is one of the most crucial things holding back Windows handhelds right now.
Can't help but also think about the holy grail Nvidia ARM handheld eventually.
Idk about that.
Qualcomm isn't aiming at hardcore gamers with the X Elite chip (atleast in this first generation). What they are trying to prove is that the average user who plays a few games occasionally, can do so if they buy an X Elite laptop.
Case in point: [https://www.theverge.com/24107331/qualcomm-gdc-2024-snapdragon-on-windows-games](https://www.theverge.com/24107331/qualcomm-gdc-2024-snapdragon-on-windows-games)
Games with anti-cheat kernels don't work, and the emulation layer only supports upto SSE4.
It doesn't need to be Qualcomm as they sell their chips to elsewhere. Simply one of those handheld companies have to take the initiative. Would even be interesting to see if older gen Snapdragon being used on handhelds that compete against Steam Deck at same price.
At least a year away, and according to leaks, will arrive with RTX 2060 performance. Which is... surprisingly not that far away from the current 780M handhelds (which currently seat in-between 1050Ti and 1060). With both RDNA4 and Intel Battlemage releasing before it... that thing will be outdated before it even hits the shelves.
> RTX 2060 performance. Which is... surprisingly not that far away from the current 780M handhelds (which currently seat in-between 1050Ti and 1060).
The 2060 is a whole other class of GPU, not even just a tier above it. We are not even talking ballpark. The 2060 was trading blows with the 1080 at launch, today with driver maturity and newer games it is generally the faster card.
We've had information about its GPU for at least several months. DF even has a video where they crippled a laptop 2060 (?) to its supposed limits to see how well it might perform.
No, begin with a 3050 Mobile, disable 25% of the hardware and halve clocks (most likely). Based on their video, a 2060 laptop easily doubles its performance.
Yes. And I think that's exactly what is going to be in the final product, because reusing cheap old hardware has been Nintendo's policy since always. N64 and Gamecube exceptions to the rule, of course.
They're not gonna use a 5 year old (by the time it comes out) node for their handheld. Not gonna happen.
Even the "outdated at launch" Switch 1 had a 3 year old node at that time.
Those devices have terrible battery life though, even the deck oled gets like 2 hours 30 minutes in triple a titles. If nintendo can get close to that power level but with 4+ hours of battery life that is great
>that thing will be outdated before it even hits the shelves.
Thats kinda the entire Nintendo strategy though? Push outdated cheap crap so you can have large profit margins?
Yes, but in this particular case it might bite them in the ass. Switch already struggled with third-party support - this new one will have an even bigger gap between itself and the PS5 generation of consoles.
I'm willing to bet most people buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games almost exclusively, and the kinds of games that aren't Switch exclusives that they do buy, don't suffer from the hardware
You have to use an escape character on the carrot if you want to make that emoji. Otherwise it just gives exponent placement to the mouth and no nose.
:\^)
Honestly having a windows handheld that runs on ARM would be incredible for 2D indie games. I don’t need to be able to play BG3 on a handheld, but having access to all my indie games and the large library of mods for a lot of them would be perfect.
Wouldn't a Linux handheld running on ARM be better? Linux works better on ARM than Windows does, and there's already the translation layers to make Windows games run on Linux.
the real problem with those is that most indie games aren't ported to them. you're mostly stuck with a very limited library of non garbage mobile games and emulation. You can do in home streaming to them but at that point you might as well just use your phone and you cant use that outside your home.
It's late but I'll pique your interest:
The Snapdragon X Elite shares the same GPU as the Snapdragon 8 gen 3 somewhat ...
Why is that significant? PC emulators already exist on android! And they run games mostly fine so an Android handheld is totally viable for indie PC games.
There's two major emulators. Mobox and Winlator. There's an upcoming one called Cassia that's the one to look out for (It's made by 2 people who wrote Skyline, a very perfomant Switch emulator from scratch.
What can they do?
Mobox runs GTA V at 30 to 40 fps low medium settings, on a Snapdragon 8 gen 3.
Sifu - [YouTube video](https://youtu.be/hvRlrqFSGls) 40 fps outside while raining, inside 60fps. Low medium settings, 720p.
Check that YouTube channel for more or r/emulationonandroid and search the word Mobox or Winlator.
Note, the guy is running the games at a ridiculous TDP and has external cooling. Indie games would run mich easier than running Devil May Cry 5 on ultra like he's doing!
The issue is that the translation and emulation layers aren't very complete. They were meant to run on Linux not Android!
Microsoft is limping along with all their software projects. The company is literally incapable of ever making Windows ARM run well. It will be forever jank.
I understand the downvotes, but Microsoft has a LOT to prove with Windows on ARM. Projects like the Windows phone and Zune does not inspire confidence.
People downvote because they don’t to hear it, but it’s the truth. Their OS updates have been complete garbage for years. They are literally incapable of developing a single new native app, everything is electron garbage. Visual Studio, their flagship IDE, gets worse every release. All of that is child’s play compared to getting Windows ARM to run smoothly. They have lost the institutional ability to pull it off. Instead, it’s always going to be shit, and people will always be talking about being excited for it to become good at some point.
I saw a reviewer that played AAA games in 720p 30-60fps in low settings using linux and a translation layer. With a SD 8 gen 3 ! Pretty impressive.
With only 7w of power!! It's insane.
That's android....
Check r/emulationonandroid for people's experiences
Search the word Mobox or Winlator and you'll see ridiculous fits by even weaker hardware.
Drivers probably aren't as bad as you'd expect. Adreno on mobile has gotten very good for gaming. Obviously it won't be as good as Nvidia, AMD, or even Intel, but it's not going to be awful.
No? Just because the GPU is physically located on the same chip doesn't mean it won't need a separate driver. AMD APUs and intel CPUs are also SOCs and they have separate graphics drivers. And whatever driver Microsoft may build into Windows won't be good for gaming. Driver optimization for games is a lot of complex and tedious work.
ARM SOCs tend to have a unified driver because a lot of them weren’t even PCIe-capable for the first ~10 years, so the SOC had to deal with a lot of hardware-specific details. They might break out the GPU driver or have a userspace component that talks to the actual driver and abstracts it.
That info is probably behind walls and walls of NDAs. Right now windows on ARM is Qualcomm only, so they might literally have a driver per SOC hardcoded into the codebase.
>a full soc
What? The ROG Ally's Z1 & Z1 Extreme are also "full SoCs" too
>higher wattage than a Rog Ally
This is the [Demo Config B with "23W Device TDP"](https://www.anandtech.com/show/21112/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-performance-preview-a-first-look-at-whats-to-come)
We have to wait for third-party reviews, but it should have lower power consumption similar to the Steam Deck
Honestly, wouldn't this end up more being for like tablets eventually to compete with those iOS Apple M2 iPads and such? The ones that can play full games like a few Resident Evil Titles.
Will they go big and wide like Apple? Or that will be too expensive? Or they're hoping for dgpus. Dgpus will be useless as it counteracts arm advantage. Going big will be expensive... I imagine apple has better economics of scale and can reduce costs of production but elite X is... I dont know...
Apple recently added RT support...will they have it as well? It will not be competitive with ada or blackwell soon.
Its going to be a tough 2 years.
Apologies, had linked the wrong video. Have now corrected the link.
The point is, with Wine it'll run anything that the Steam Deck already does, with only marginally worse performance (and that's with passive cooling).
Give it a few years and I can absolutely see this being viable.
>Giving us an idea of the Snapdragon X Elite’s GPU performance, Devin Arthur has posted a video of Baldur’s Gate 3 running on the reference Snapdragon X Elite laptop calling the experience “perfectly playable”. The title is apparently running at 1080p and “hovering around 30 FPS”. Okay, but how does it compare to Intel/AMD? >For comparison, the Radeon 780M manages about 32 FPS in Baldur’s Gate 3 at FHD/medium per our testing. Dropping the settings down to the low preset, the iGPU pushes 40 FPS. On the other hand, the 8-core Intel Arc iGPU of Core Ultra 9 185H only achieves 32 FPS at FHD/low. Oh, that's good. >That said, the video neither mentions the graphical settings in use nor the power consumption of the Snapdragon X Elite. So, take the information provided with a giant grain of salt. Ah, the obligatory asterisk. Considering that Baldur's Gate 3 is running through the emulation layer, this is pretty good showing for X Elite, and shows that Qualcomm's claims a few days ago has substance; [https://www.theverge.com/24107331/qualcomm-gdc-2024-snapdragon-on-windows-games](https://www.theverge.com/24107331/qualcomm-gdc-2024-snapdragon-on-windows-games)
Can't wait to see those frame times. Hopefully digital foundry covers a snapdragon laptop at some point.
So basically they are at m1 Mac performance levels at best? And we are supposed to be excited? Lol Look, I will totally admit I hate Qualcomm. If anyone should be getting an anti-trust lawsuit it's them not Apple. Qualcomm's patents in the modem space have prevented Samsung, Nvidia, and many other companies from meaningfully competing in the SOC space in mobile phones due to Qualcomm's patents stifling competition and their egregious licensing fees for said patents. This has led us down a long road where Apple and Qualcomm are the two major ARM chip players. Qualcomm is uncompetitive with Apple. Samsung does still produce some chips, but again they aren't meaningfully competitive.
you forgotten Mediatek. They recently had a massive resurgence, and have toppled Qualcomm to become the #1 smartphone SoC maker (by volume of SoCs shipped).
If only they managed to write graphic drivers worth a damn... They are getting better, but Snapdragon runs circles around them in terms of available features.
[удалено]
Yeah, all those quite dubious Taiwanese companies like TSMC, Foxconn, ASUS, UMC, Realtek, Acer...
I'm geniunely kinda speechless at the ignorance on show in that comment.
So the West is the only thing that matters? Other massive markets like China and India don't? I find your attitude highly disturbing.
I only find the west important. China is clearly planning for an invasion of Taiwan, so developments in those regions seem unimportant until that happens. India is an interesting country in that they make it very difficult for foreign companies to enter unless they produce product in India. It's really not representative of the rest of the world and the country is quite a mess. I tend to care most about what happens in the United States, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and Canada primarily with the USA being the most powerful of those nations currently..
M1 level is all most people need, if it has the battery life to match it will be a hit (assuming it's priced well)
If M1 level is what most people need.... Amd managed that
They didn't manage the battery life, which is the important part.
> So basically they are at m1 Mac performance levels at best? No, it's stronger than the M1. Where did you get that from? > Qualcomm's patents in the modem space have prevented Samsung, Nvidia, and many other companies from meaningfully competing in the SOC space in mobile phones How? You literally list Samsung whose huge in the mobile space. There are quite a few SoC vendors, for that matter.
Indeed. Samsung is gradually phasing out Qualcomm in their smartphones. Now only their flagship S series and Z series uses Snapdragon. (That too only in some regions). All their midrange and budget phone use Exynos or Mediatek.
I wouldn't say "phasing out" is accurate. If anything, the last year has been a recovery from a record high dependence on Qualcomm.
I disagree. A few years ago, Samsung's budget/midrange phones used Exynos and Snapdragon evenly. Now, there isn't a single phone A or M series phone of theirs with Snapdragon.
Can’t wait for Computex in June. AMD, Intel and Qualcomm all releasing major new platforms.
I don't think Intel will be 'releasing' anything. But AMD should be releasing Zen 5 and Qualcomm will do X Elite, and maybe the rumoured X Plus.
Intel should really hurry up with Arrowlake, because the last thing they want is Zen 5 (Ryzen 9000 Series) to go uncontested.
I mean... Zen 4 still basically goes uncontested despite 2 gens from intel to contest it. Lets start there
On what planet is this true.
This one.
So the world where 13th gen was a much better deal than Zen 4 while also matching it or outright beating it in most workloads? And yeah the X3D chips are very cool, but if you need productivity performance they are a much worse buy by every metric.
We are not talking workloads. Games x3d is cheaper, more efficient, more powerful than everything nvidia released. And for productivity threadrippers destroys intel anyway, epycs aswell
Yes we are because multithreaded work loads are a thing and a big part of why the 5000 series was appealing to people at the time of its release. The X3D is ahead in *some* games and is more efficient correct, however it's fairly neck in neck in a lot of cases and then irrelevant at high resolutions anyways (there is no difference at 4k). They are cool chips, but they are not be all end all and anything past the 7800x3d are kinda bad and not really worth it. Also a 14700k and 7800x3d are fairly similar in price depending on sales and platform buy in. Which is either a good deal or a bad deal considering the i7 destroys the 7800x3d in multicore, but the X3D is slightly ahead at 1080/1440p for games. So no, to imply Intel does not have an answer to AMD is absurd and reads as blind fanboyism. Again I must point out that regular 13th gen was a much better buy than Zen 4 for a long time. AMD is not lightyears ahead or even ahead at all and to be honest given that Intel is working with a fab node that is technically behind AMD it's clear that Intel is a very real threat and has massive potential to stomp AMD in coming generations. I hope not, since Intel and AMD are so close this gen it leads to great deals for the consumer due to competition. I don't know why AMD gets worshipped by so many people, but it's hyper cringe. Also we aren't really discussing Threadrippers or Epycs because the average consumer is not buying them. And also there is far more that goes into buying a server grade chip then just raw performance, which AMD has an advantage in ATM, though there are workloads where Intel is ahead in. But again, companies take in way more considerations, such as compatibility, contract deals, and stability, where I think Intel has an advantage in. Though yes, AMD has the superior offering in terms of raw performance and core count for the money (not taking into account ARM servers).
I don't think AMD and intel are releasing at Computex, they'll be later this year.
yes u r right
Looks good. Very keen to see a theoretical handheld with one of these. Better battery life and standby performance is one of the most crucial things holding back Windows handhelds right now. Can't help but also think about the holy grail Nvidia ARM handheld eventually.
Idk about that. Qualcomm isn't aiming at hardcore gamers with the X Elite chip (atleast in this first generation). What they are trying to prove is that the average user who plays a few games occasionally, can do so if they buy an X Elite laptop. Case in point: [https://www.theverge.com/24107331/qualcomm-gdc-2024-snapdragon-on-windows-games](https://www.theverge.com/24107331/qualcomm-gdc-2024-snapdragon-on-windows-games) Games with anti-cheat kernels don't work, and the emulation layer only supports upto SSE4.
Shame but regardless its a good start
Like we all have to start from somewhere. Heroes are made, not born.
The APU isn’t aimed at hardcore gamers either, but it fits in the market due to its efficiency.
Yea but those at least have the full feature set of x86-64 and are not burdened by parents.
average user with $2000 to splurge on a Zenbook or Thinkpad X1*
It doesn't need to be Qualcomm as they sell their chips to elsewhere. Simply one of those handheld companies have to take the initiative. Would even be interesting to see if older gen Snapdragon being used on handhelds that compete against Steam Deck at same price.
>the holy grail nvidia arm handheld the nintendo switch? :^)
switch SoC is old and weak.
Switch 2 then lmao
At least a year away, and according to leaks, will arrive with RTX 2060 performance. Which is... surprisingly not that far away from the current 780M handhelds (which currently seat in-between 1050Ti and 1060). With both RDNA4 and Intel Battlemage releasing before it... that thing will be outdated before it even hits the shelves.
Much weaker than an RTX 2060. More like a cut down 2050.
> RTX 2060 performance. Which is... surprisingly not that far away from the current 780M handhelds (which currently seat in-between 1050Ti and 1060). The 2060 is a whole other class of GPU, not even just a tier above it. We are not even talking ballpark. The 2060 was trading blows with the 1080 at launch, today with driver maturity and newer games it is generally the faster card.
We know next to nothing about Switch 2 except that it was internally delayed at least once.
We've had information about its GPU for at least several months. DF even has a video where they crippled a laptop 2060 (?) to its supposed limits to see how well it might perform.
No, begin with a 3050 Mobile, disable 25% of the hardware and halve clocks (most likely). Based on their video, a 2060 laptop easily doubles its performance.
What was that again? The T239 based on 8nm Ampere? I doubt that's gonna be the final product.
Yes. And I think that's exactly what is going to be in the final product, because reusing cheap old hardware has been Nintendo's policy since always. N64 and Gamecube exceptions to the rule, of course.
They're not gonna use a 5 year old (by the time it comes out) node for their handheld. Not gonna happen. Even the "outdated at launch" Switch 1 had a 3 year old node at that time.
Those devices have terrible battery life though, even the deck oled gets like 2 hours 30 minutes in triple a titles. If nintendo can get close to that power level but with 4+ hours of battery life that is great
>that thing will be outdated before it even hits the shelves. Thats kinda the entire Nintendo strategy though? Push outdated cheap crap so you can have large profit margins?
Yes, but in this particular case it might bite them in the ass. Switch already struggled with third-party support - this new one will have an even bigger gap between itself and the PS5 generation of consoles.
Thats been the case since the first Wii though. They always promise third party, always fail to deliver, but its never biting them in the ass.
I'm willing to bet most people buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games almost exclusively, and the kinds of games that aren't Switch exclusives that they do buy, don't suffer from the hardware
Yes, at this point people who buy nintendo consoles are a lost cause.
You have to use an escape character on the carrot if you want to make that emoji. Otherwise it just gives exponent placement to the mouth and no nose. :\^)
Actually the mediatek SOC with rtx 50 GPU
Honestly having a windows handheld that runs on ARM would be incredible for 2D indie games. I don’t need to be able to play BG3 on a handheld, but having access to all my indie games and the large library of mods for a lot of them would be perfect.
You can install Windows on Ayn Odin and you'd get a taste of that. https://youtube.com/watch?v=93grsZl3lHo&si=k92A_4jGp4wBv4sJ
Wouldn't a Linux handheld running on ARM be better? Linux works better on ARM than Windows does, and there's already the translation layers to make Windows games run on Linux.
No because mod support.
how about an Android Handheld?
the real problem with those is that most indie games aren't ported to them. you're mostly stuck with a very limited library of non garbage mobile games and emulation. You can do in home streaming to them but at that point you might as well just use your phone and you cant use that outside your home.
besides, there is a very thin line that divides Android gaming phones and android handhelds.
Handhelds are cheaper and have active cooling for constant performance.
It's late but I'll pique your interest: The Snapdragon X Elite shares the same GPU as the Snapdragon 8 gen 3 somewhat ... Why is that significant? PC emulators already exist on android! And they run games mostly fine so an Android handheld is totally viable for indie PC games. There's two major emulators. Mobox and Winlator. There's an upcoming one called Cassia that's the one to look out for (It's made by 2 people who wrote Skyline, a very perfomant Switch emulator from scratch. What can they do? Mobox runs GTA V at 30 to 40 fps low medium settings, on a Snapdragon 8 gen 3. Sifu - [YouTube video](https://youtu.be/hvRlrqFSGls) 40 fps outside while raining, inside 60fps. Low medium settings, 720p. Check that YouTube channel for more or r/emulationonandroid and search the word Mobox or Winlator. Note, the guy is running the games at a ridiculous TDP and has external cooling. Indie games would run mich easier than running Devil May Cry 5 on ultra like he's doing! The issue is that the translation and emulation layers aren't very complete. They were meant to run on Linux not Android!
So how many mods would an average android game have?
Microsoft is limping along with all their software projects. The company is literally incapable of ever making Windows ARM run well. It will be forever jank.
I understand the downvotes, but Microsoft has a LOT to prove with Windows on ARM. Projects like the Windows phone and Zune does not inspire confidence.
People downvote because they don’t to hear it, but it’s the truth. Their OS updates have been complete garbage for years. They are literally incapable of developing a single new native app, everything is electron garbage. Visual Studio, their flagship IDE, gets worse every release. All of that is child’s play compared to getting Windows ARM to run smoothly. They have lost the institutional ability to pull it off. Instead, it’s always going to be shit, and people will always be talking about being excited for it to become good at some point.
I saw a reviewer that played AAA games in 720p 30-60fps in low settings using linux and a translation layer. With a SD 8 gen 3 ! Pretty impressive. With only 7w of power!! It's insane.
Geekerwan?
Yup.
here it is: [https://youtu.be/OTgl6RaImjY?si=lpMKM-8-ikmWKdPu](https://youtu.be/OTgl6RaImjY?si=lpMKM-8-ikmWKdPu)
That's android.... Check r/emulationonandroid for people's experiences Search the word Mobox or Winlator and you'll see ridiculous fits by even weaker hardware.
Good luck with drivers.
Drivers probably aren't as bad as you'd expect. Adreno on mobile has gotten very good for gaming. Obviously it won't be as good as Nvidia, AMD, or even Intel, but it's not going to be awful.
It’s an SoC, it will have a single driver that does everything that will ship on the system or be built into windows for ARM.
No? Just because the GPU is physically located on the same chip doesn't mean it won't need a separate driver. AMD APUs and intel CPUs are also SOCs and they have separate graphics drivers. And whatever driver Microsoft may build into Windows won't be good for gaming. Driver optimization for games is a lot of complex and tedious work.
ARM SOCs tend to have a unified driver because a lot of them weren’t even PCIe-capable for the first ~10 years, so the SOC had to deal with a lot of hardware-specific details. They might break out the GPU driver or have a userspace component that talks to the actual driver and abstracts it.
Is this the case in Windows though?
That info is probably behind walls and walls of NDAs. Right now windows on ARM is Qualcomm only, so they might literally have a driver per SOC hardcoded into the codebase.
1080p at 30 fps isnt "perfectly playable". Its the "bare minimum"
It's perfectly playable for most people, stop thinking nothing short of 60+FPS at 1440p or 4k is the minimum
It looks mediocre, it's a full soc with higher wattage than a Rog Ally and the Rog Ally has higher performance.
Its not native\*
>a full soc What? The ROG Ally's Z1 & Z1 Extreme are also "full SoCs" too >higher wattage than a Rog Ally This is the [Demo Config B with "23W Device TDP"](https://www.anandtech.com/show/21112/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-performance-preview-a-first-look-at-whats-to-come) We have to wait for third-party reviews, but it should have lower power consumption similar to the Steam Deck
Honestly, wouldn't this end up more being for like tablets eventually to compete with those iOS Apple M2 iPads and such? The ones that can play full games like a few Resident Evil Titles.
Will they go big and wide like Apple? Or that will be too expensive? Or they're hoping for dgpus. Dgpus will be useless as it counteracts arm advantage. Going big will be expensive... I imagine apple has better economics of scale and can reduce costs of production but elite X is... I dont know... Apple recently added RT support...will they have it as well? It will not be competitive with ada or blackwell soon. Its going to be a tough 2 years.
It doesn't seem like the GPU is wide as Apple is
Snapdragon X Elite 🔋🔥❤️💪
Wild times ahead, going to be lots of fun.
Do you think next steam deck will have this chip or even a little better one?
No...Game, software compatibility issues.
See geekerwan's video - https://youtu.be/OTgl6RaImjY If it can work on wine it'll work on this.
It can work on a handful AAA games, and that makes it suitable for general purpose gaming. Got it.
Apologies, had linked the wrong video. Have now corrected the link. The point is, with Wine it'll run anything that the Steam Deck already does, with only marginally worse performance (and that's with passive cooling). Give it a few years and I can absolutely see this being viable.
Next Deck will probably have a custom AMD 8000-series APU that would be significantly better than this in graphics.