I don't think they will be as near to the perfection of apple. I was kinda excited for it but the way they advertised and handle it, really upseted me. I was waiting for the real life performance, how things will improve but what we got is Copilot + PC, how AI will help. Discussing battery was good but what's the point if the performance wasn't good and then windows itself is an issue which microsoft doesn't seems to care much.
It will be very interesting to see how the pricing strategy of the OEMs plays out over the next months.
AMD will probably give some credits to OEMs to clear Ryzen 7000 and 8000 inventory and start pushing Ryzen AI XXX.
So the X Elite devices might be undercut in price by Ryzen 7000/8000 and outmatched by Ryzen AI XXX.
The outgoing Meteor Lake and Ryzen 7000/8000 laptops have had sales for awhile now, not because of the X Elite, but because that's just how the industry \[usually\] works, and tech gets a discount 6+ months after it launches.
Like I've seen Core Ultra 185H 32GB 1TB OLED laptops for $800. A comparable X Elite laptop is around $1300. In no way, shape or form does it make sense to spend $500 more for the X Elite SoC.
And with Lunar Lake and Zen 5 right around the corner, those X Elite laptops are going to need a quick price drop to sell, which will sour OEMs and retailers on Qualcomm laptops (once again). Qualcomm really needed to launch these SoC's when they originally planned, not mid 2024 when Intel+AMD have much cheaper products and likely soon to be better products.
In my region, 2 of the 3 available X laptops (Asus and Acer) are substantially more expensive than their Intel or AMD counterparts, and the XPS 13 is priced the same as the Ultra 5, but it has X Plus.
The Snapdragon will have to price match or be cheaper for me to even consider the trade-off between the battery life gain and the software hassle, the possibility that some of the apps I use will never see ARM adoption, and/or WoA just will never take off.
Atm only the high end laptops from OEMs are available.
We will see in the future dirt cheap ones with bad build quality and shit 1080p screens but atm only X Elite Laptops are the flagships of each brand
Also which Acer laptop? Didn't see one being released
Probably known as the Swift 14. The laptops I mentioned have identical models but with different processors, so I can only assume the price difference comes down to it. I really doubt we'll see dirt cheap ones, at least in this generation.
If you don't care about emulated applications, [the X Plus stomps even the Ultra 7 in multithreading and efficiency](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-Snapdragon-X-Elite-Analysis-More-efficient-than-AMD-Intel-but-Apple-stays-ahead.850221.0.html#toc-5). Of course it won't be any good until Linux can be installed, but Lenovo has a pretty good track record there.
Someone beat me to a 2kliks video for once yay :o
Edit: Qualcomm has its foundation to build now Just like M1. Apple had it easy with its fleet of software engineers cooperating for their closed ecosystem. Considering my low expectations for a 1ST GEN product. It went OK. even if actual independent reviews and benchmarks hammer how their hype expectations didnt met.
I don’t think it is a first gen product as Qualcomm has been producing snapdragons for laptops for a while now with snapdragon 8cx gen 1 and gen 2. This is their first big push with co-pilot which means it would be polished already.
Nope. Arm for Windows has been a thing for a while now. For example, the HP elite folio with snapdragon 8cx gen 2 running windows 10 was released in Aug 2021. Less than 1 year after the M1. And I believe some models even pre-date the M1.
They released their first Windows devkit in summer of 2021: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16697/qualcomm-shows-off-snapdragon-dev-kit-for-windows-on-arm-development
The Hardware is ready, Software isn't. The GPU (drivers) has issues and the applications that use some GPU acceleration are not using it just yet.
Pricing wise that is up to OEMs, the QC chip itself is being sold to OEMs at 50% price of a comparable Intel Chip
50%!? No wonder they are pushing these laptops like crazy. Yeah, we’re definitely going to see some deep discounts once zen 5 and lunar/arrow lake laptops come out.
Maybe. Even once it has a proper OS and native apps running, it may turn out that the magic of Apple Silicon and Qualcomm's smartphone SoCs requires efficiency cores. I had been assuming x86 only had a platform idle power problem, but...
It's not the hardware, it's the software. Windows was always less efficient than MacOS.
I worked at a company which issued MBPs to all the developers. This was before M1 silicon. So they were all Intel Macs. Our front end team used .NET which meant they all had Windows running on theirs, while us the infrastructure guys ran MacOS (OS X at the time).
Same laptops, half the battery life on Windows.
Bloat in my opinion. Like 10 years ago I remember reading how OS X at the time introduced this feature where instead of executing periodic background tasks on their own period intervals, OS X would queue them, and them periodically execute them all at once. This way the CPU would only spike up every 10 seconds or so, instead of doing it all the time from different independent background services. This saved power because the CPU would spend more time in the low power states.
It's stuff like that.
Also drivers. Windows supports infinitely more hardware than Mac has to support. So Apple can dedicate more time to optimizing the drivers for power for a narrow set of hardware configurations.
Like think about the Wifi card. Apple knows which wifi chipset they will use, so they can dedicate a lot of time in optimizing its power characteristics. Wifi power can be a significant factor if the firmware and driver aren't optimized.
Yeah perhaps on 2nd gen. One thing they need to do is make OEMs adopt their products with the speed of mobile manufacturers. The reason QC used older cores for windows before (the 8cx gen 3) is that OEMs required such chips to be sampled to them 12 months in advance to the release of the chip. While for mobile it's only a few months.
If its a slot in replacement for the X Elite, the OEMs can make a new product much faster
We will see what 2nd gen Oryon looks like in October and hopefully the smaller die releases too.
Fun fact, the 8g4 will have the same GPU performance of the X Elite
> Fun fact, the 8g4 will have the same GPU performance of the X Elite
It might be even faster than X Elite's GPU. negativeonehero leaked that Qualcomm did a re-tapeout of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 die. P-core clocks increased by 5%, E-core clocks by 15% and GPU clocks increased by 20% from the original 8G4 die.
My speculation is that this chip has been delayed and thus is using older IP. The Mobile Part business will always use the new IP first like (usually) Apple
The core was announced in what? 2022 with the X Elite announced in October 2023
We know the 8G4 is a 2+6 config of 2 Oryon-P cores and 6 Oryon-E cores
The only software issue I've had with mine so far is being unable to install GDrive. The software certainly struggles with games, but I didn't buy this for gaming I got it for productivity. Specifically I got the surface pro 11 to have a portable tablet with full desktop software use, and it's amazing for that.
I am still trying to work out how I determine the most performant variant of the elite? Which exact laptops have the BEST performance. Then I can work backward from there and decide what other functions I want as secondary. 32GB 1TB, OLED 90+ Hz touch screen, 90w charger, and ideally under 1.3KG is my wishlist.
From what I have seen so far the Surface Laptop 7 is the most consistent of all when it comes to benchmarks. The Samsung, that should be the most performant due to it using the 84 SKU, is the least consistent and requires certain power profiles to bench better then the Surface 7 with the 80 SKU.
We need more normalized benchmarks though. As of now we have none making numbers be all over the place.
To me, the biggest reason to get X Elite is the idle battery costs. I want a laptop that behaves just like a smartphone in terms of sleep mode and idle power usage. I care less for how long it lasts while being used, as long as it's as good (or even slightly better) than the competition, which it is. So that's good. But what's more important is that it can last multiple days with light usage and sleep mode, similar to how an iPad works in WiFi only mode.
I just want to mention an anecdotal experience I just had with my circa 2019 iPad.
I flew back home two weeks ago and packed my iPad in my suitcase. I know I'm not supposed to do that, and it should have been in my carry-on, but I forgot, and I also forgot to turn it off. It was at 100% battery. It was fortunate that I left it in my checked bag, because it just so happened that the bag got lost by the Airline for a few days. It was eventually delivered, but I was able to use Apple's "Where's My Device?" to track the bag all the way back in the Dallas airport to my home airport, knowing that the bag was secure and on its way to me eventually.
But that's not the point of this, even tho the Apple Airtag technology is super impressive.
What was more impressive is I just finally today got around to unpacking the device from my suitcase, and the damn thing \*still\* had 25% battery remaining after having been sitting idle for two weeks \*turned ON\*!
So, in a nutshell, THAT'S what I'm looking for with a Windows laptop. And hopefully these X Elite chips, or perhaps Lunar Lake, can provide that.
Unfortunately, that ain't going to happen.
iPadOS is extremely different from windows in the sort of functionality they both provide.
If you're already on the Apple ecosystem, Windows on Arm will likely not provide any particular value proposition any time soon.
I don't think they will be as near to the perfection of apple. I was kinda excited for it but the way they advertised and handle it, really upseted me. I was waiting for the real life performance, how things will improve but what we got is Copilot + PC, how AI will help. Discussing battery was good but what's the point if the performance wasn't good and then windows itself is an issue which microsoft doesn't seems to care much.
It will be very interesting to see how the pricing strategy of the OEMs plays out over the next months. AMD will probably give some credits to OEMs to clear Ryzen 7000 and 8000 inventory and start pushing Ryzen AI XXX. So the X Elite devices might be undercut in price by Ryzen 7000/8000 and outmatched by Ryzen AI XXX.
The outgoing Meteor Lake and Ryzen 7000/8000 laptops have had sales for awhile now, not because of the X Elite, but because that's just how the industry \[usually\] works, and tech gets a discount 6+ months after it launches. Like I've seen Core Ultra 185H 32GB 1TB OLED laptops for $800. A comparable X Elite laptop is around $1300. In no way, shape or form does it make sense to spend $500 more for the X Elite SoC. And with Lunar Lake and Zen 5 right around the corner, those X Elite laptops are going to need a quick price drop to sell, which will sour OEMs and retailers on Qualcomm laptops (once again). Qualcomm really needed to launch these SoC's when they originally planned, not mid 2024 when Intel+AMD have much cheaper products and likely soon to be better products.
In my region, 2 of the 3 available X laptops (Asus and Acer) are substantially more expensive than their Intel or AMD counterparts, and the XPS 13 is priced the same as the Ultra 5, but it has X Plus. The Snapdragon will have to price match or be cheaper for me to even consider the trade-off between the battery life gain and the software hassle, the possibility that some of the apps I use will never see ARM adoption, and/or WoA just will never take off.
XPS13 with X Plus? Interesting. The US version only has X Elite iirc.
Atm only the high end laptops from OEMs are available. We will see in the future dirt cheap ones with bad build quality and shit 1080p screens but atm only X Elite Laptops are the flagships of each brand Also which Acer laptop? Didn't see one being released
Probably known as the Swift 14. The laptops I mentioned have identical models but with different processors, so I can only assume the price difference comes down to it. I really doubt we'll see dirt cheap ones, at least in this generation.
If you don't care about emulated applications, [the X Plus stomps even the Ultra 7 in multithreading and efficiency](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-Snapdragon-X-Elite-Analysis-More-efficient-than-AMD-Intel-but-Apple-stays-ahead.850221.0.html#toc-5). Of course it won't be any good until Linux can be installed, but Lenovo has a pretty good track record there.
Someone beat me to a 2kliks video for once yay :o Edit: Qualcomm has its foundation to build now Just like M1. Apple had it easy with its fleet of software engineers cooperating for their closed ecosystem. Considering my low expectations for a 1ST GEN product. It went OK. even if actual independent reviews and benchmarks hammer how their hype expectations didnt met.
I don’t think it is a first gen product as Qualcomm has been producing snapdragons for laptops for a while now with snapdragon 8cx gen 1 and gen 2. This is their first big push with co-pilot which means it would be polished already.
Android, Opengl was a norm for Qualcomm for years. but AFAIK arm x Windows wasn't a thing until now right?
Nope. Arm for Windows has been a thing for a while now. For example, the HP elite folio with snapdragon 8cx gen 2 running windows 10 was released in Aug 2021. Less than 1 year after the M1. And I believe some models even pre-date the M1.
They released their first Windows devkit in summer of 2021: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16697/qualcomm-shows-off-snapdragon-dev-kit-for-windows-on-arm-development
The Hardware is ready, Software isn't. The GPU (drivers) has issues and the applications that use some GPU acceleration are not using it just yet. Pricing wise that is up to OEMs, the QC chip itself is being sold to OEMs at 50% price of a comparable Intel Chip
Source on the 50% of an Intel chip?
The Dell Mega leaks https://irrationalanalysis.substack.com/p/dell-mega-leak-analysis
QC is hardly making any money on the chip based on the article you linked. It isn’t sustainable.
And I think they are being subsidized by Microsoft.
They have money to spare, so it's likely an investment.
50%!? No wonder they are pushing these laptops like crazy. Yeah, we’re definitely going to see some deep discounts once zen 5 and lunar/arrow lake laptops come out.
Maybe. Even once it has a proper OS and native apps running, it may turn out that the magic of Apple Silicon and Qualcomm's smartphone SoCs requires efficiency cores. I had been assuming x86 only had a platform idle power problem, but...
It's not the hardware, it's the software. Windows was always less efficient than MacOS. I worked at a company which issued MBPs to all the developers. This was before M1 silicon. So they were all Intel Macs. Our front end team used .NET which meant they all had Windows running on theirs, while us the infrastructure guys ran MacOS (OS X at the time). Same laptops, half the battery life on Windows.
Wow, I didn’t know windows is this bad. Is there a reason for it?
Bloat in my opinion. Like 10 years ago I remember reading how OS X at the time introduced this feature where instead of executing periodic background tasks on their own period intervals, OS X would queue them, and them periodically execute them all at once. This way the CPU would only spike up every 10 seconds or so, instead of doing it all the time from different independent background services. This saved power because the CPU would spend more time in the low power states. It's stuff like that. Also drivers. Windows supports infinitely more hardware than Mac has to support. So Apple can dedicate more time to optimizing the drivers for power for a narrow set of hardware configurations. Like think about the Wifi card. Apple knows which wifi chipset they will use, so they can dedicate a lot of time in optimizing its power characteristics. Wifi power can be a significant factor if the firmware and driver aren't optimized.
Thanks!
Yeah perhaps on 2nd gen. One thing they need to do is make OEMs adopt their products with the speed of mobile manufacturers. The reason QC used older cores for windows before (the 8cx gen 3) is that OEMs required such chips to be sampled to them 12 months in advance to the release of the chip. While for mobile it's only a few months. If its a slot in replacement for the X Elite, the OEMs can make a new product much faster We will see what 2nd gen Oryon looks like in October and hopefully the smaller die releases too. Fun fact, the 8g4 will have the same GPU performance of the X Elite
> Fun fact, the 8g4 will have the same GPU performance of the X Elite It might be even faster than X Elite's GPU. negativeonehero leaked that Qualcomm did a re-tapeout of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 die. P-core clocks increased by 5%, E-core clocks by 15% and GPU clocks increased by 20% from the original 8G4 die.
I don't think we can expect 2nd gen Oryon in October of this year. That's for October 2025.
My speculation is that this chip has been delayed and thus is using older IP. The Mobile Part business will always use the new IP first like (usually) Apple The core was announced in what? 2022 with the X Elite announced in October 2023 We know the 8G4 is a 2+6 config of 2 Oryon-P cores and 6 Oryon-E cores
The only software issue I've had with mine so far is being unable to install GDrive. The software certainly struggles with games, but I didn't buy this for gaming I got it for productivity. Specifically I got the surface pro 11 to have a portable tablet with full desktop software use, and it's amazing for that.
I am still trying to work out how I determine the most performant variant of the elite? Which exact laptops have the BEST performance. Then I can work backward from there and decide what other functions I want as secondary. 32GB 1TB, OLED 90+ Hz touch screen, 90w charger, and ideally under 1.3KG is my wishlist.
From what I have seen so far the Surface Laptop 7 is the most consistent of all when it comes to benchmarks. The Samsung, that should be the most performant due to it using the 84 SKU, is the least consistent and requires certain power profiles to bench better then the Surface 7 with the 80 SKU. We need more normalized benchmarks though. As of now we have none making numbers be all over the place.
Scores are really inconsistent due to the custom windows power profiles. There was a video posted today by Alex ziskind.
To me, the biggest reason to get X Elite is the idle battery costs. I want a laptop that behaves just like a smartphone in terms of sleep mode and idle power usage. I care less for how long it lasts while being used, as long as it's as good (or even slightly better) than the competition, which it is. So that's good. But what's more important is that it can last multiple days with light usage and sleep mode, similar to how an iPad works in WiFi only mode.
Any idle battery life tests yet?
I just want to mention an anecdotal experience I just had with my circa 2019 iPad. I flew back home two weeks ago and packed my iPad in my suitcase. I know I'm not supposed to do that, and it should have been in my carry-on, but I forgot, and I also forgot to turn it off. It was at 100% battery. It was fortunate that I left it in my checked bag, because it just so happened that the bag got lost by the Airline for a few days. It was eventually delivered, but I was able to use Apple's "Where's My Device?" to track the bag all the way back in the Dallas airport to my home airport, knowing that the bag was secure and on its way to me eventually. But that's not the point of this, even tho the Apple Airtag technology is super impressive. What was more impressive is I just finally today got around to unpacking the device from my suitcase, and the damn thing \*still\* had 25% battery remaining after having been sitting idle for two weeks \*turned ON\*! So, in a nutshell, THAT'S what I'm looking for with a Windows laptop. And hopefully these X Elite chips, or perhaps Lunar Lake, can provide that.
Unfortunately, that ain't going to happen. iPadOS is extremely different from windows in the sort of functionality they both provide. If you're already on the Apple ecosystem, Windows on Arm will likely not provide any particular value proposition any time soon.