The Snapdragon X Elite is currently the only product in Qualcomm’s new Windows-focused lineup of chipsets, but that will not be the case forever. Details of a Plus model have surfaced, but before we delve into that, let’s first break down the Elite specs.
The Snapdragon X Elite name is actually used for three chips. All three have 12 CPU cores, 42 MB of cache, and an NPU that delivers 45 TOPS performance. However, the CPU and GPU are clocked differently.
For more details on the three versions, refer to the table below. The Snapdragon X Plus is similar to the lowest of the Elite versions, except it has 10 CPU cores instead of 12.
Qualcomm has apparently shown behind-the-scenes benchmark comparisons to compare the Elite and Plus chips. The comparison here appears to be with the top Elite chip, which hits 3.8GHz on all cores and 4.2GHz with two cores active (versus 3.4GHz and no boost for the Plus).
You can observe the higher single-core scores on Geekbench and Cinebench. Multi-threaded scores are significantly higher for the Elite, given the two extra cores and higher clocks. They are 18% higher in Geekbench MT and an impressive 38% higher in Cinebench MT.
The GPU performance also differs – 4.6 TFLOPs for the top Elite chip and 3.8 TFLOPs for the other two Elites and the Plus. Consequently, the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme frame rate decreases from around 42fps to about 37fps. All Snapdragon X chips have the same NPU, delivering 45 TOPS performance.
Qualcomm has not officially unveiled the Snapdragon X Plus yet, and products with an X-series chip still exist only as rumors. We have heard that Samsung and Lenovo are working on laptops with the new chips. Many other companies are as well, but they have managed to keep the leaks under control.