Three new Snapdragon X Plus processors were presented by Qualcomm at the IFA trade fair in Berlin.
Integral components of Microsoft's Copilot+ PC project, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors have been on a roll in recent weeks. On paper, they are not only high-performance, but also much more energy-efficient than their AMD or Intel counterparts, and therefore capable of propelling the autonomy of laptops equipped with them to unprecedented heights. In any case, this is Qualcomm's promise, and one that the brand's many partners are taking on board.
Qualcomm
There is, however, a downside: the price of Snapdragon X Elite/Plus processors makes it impossible to design very affordable notebooks, as Qualcomm's CEO readily admitted at the IFA trade show in Berlin: " A whole segment of PC users cannot access these machines ". This kind of admission is rare in the IT world, but Cristiano Amon had no intention of resting on his laurels, and in the wake of this, he announced the imminent release of three new Snapdragon X Plus processors, precisely in order to offer more affordable notebooks, the $799 target having been repeated many times.
Qualcomm
While the Snapdragon X Elite has 12 cores, and the Snapdragon X Plus still has 10, two of the new processors presented now have just 8. These eight cores remain of the same type, but the reduction in power is obvious, all the more so as the total cache memory is logically affected (down to 30 MB) and operating frequencies are also slightly lowered. The baby of the Snapdragon X Elite/Plus range, the one that should enable us to reach the $799 price tag, is the X1P-42-100, whose power is estimated at 1.7 TFLOPS, compared with the 4.6 TFLOPS of the most powerful X Elite, the X1E-00-1DE.
Qualcomm
Qualcomm is reassuring, however, and while awaiting the first independent tests, has published a number of benchmarks to prove that its two 8-core models still have enough power. It's true that the results are rather reassuring, but there's another question. Indeed, the first prices of Copilot+ PCs with 8-core Snapdragon chips seem to be a long way off the $799 mark: we're talking more like 900 or even 950 euros. To be continued...
