Benchmarks suggest 8-core Snapdragon X Plus laptops may be terrible at gaming
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The big picture: Cheaper Copilot+ laptops, powered by an 8-core Snapdragon X Plus processor, are expected to debut at the IFA 2024 trade show in Berlin later this month. However, early leaked benchmarks suggest that the new SoC might be a bit of a disappointment, particularly for gamers.
The benchmarks reveal underwhelming results in both CPU and GPU tests. In Cinebench 2024, the new chip scored 102 points in the single-core test, five percent lower than the 107 points achieved by the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus. In the multi-core benchmark, the new processor only managed 649 points, which is 20 percent lower than the 809 points scored by its more powerful counterpart.
The scores in Blender and Geekbench are equally disappointing. The Snapdragon X Plus CPU took 2:33.48 to complete the standard render test in Blender. In Geekbench 6, it only managed 2,422 points in the single-core test and 11,386 points in the multi-core benchmark.
In 3DMark Time Spy, the Adreno X1-45 GPU scored 1,025 points overall, with just 916 graphics points – significantly lower than the 1,900 points achieved by the Snapdragon X Elite. In 3DMark Steel Nomad, the GPU scored 1,159 points at only 8.6 FPS, which is approximately 40 percent lower than the X Elite.
The report also revealed real-world gaming benchmarks for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and the results were similarly disappointing. In this six-year-old game, the GPU could only achieve an average of 18 FPS at 1080p on low settings and just 12 FPS on high settings at 1080p – again, significantly lower than the 33 FPS scored by the X Elite.
According to CPU-Z, the tested chip features eight Oryon CPU cores divided into two clusters, running at 3.24 GHz and 3.42 GHz, respectively. The CPU, based on a 4nm process node, has 30MB of total cache, including 12MB of L2 cache for each cluster. The GPU is an Adreno X1-45 chip clocked at 280 MHz, delivering 1.7 TFLOPS of AI compute. However, the NPU still delivers 45 TFLOPS, in line with Microsoft’s minimum requirement for Copilot+ PCs.
The benchmarked Snapdragon X Plus chipset, codenamed “X1P-42-100,” is designed for mainstream Copilot+ PCs. The test was conducted on an ASUS ProArt PZ13 laptop with model number “HT5306QA_HT5306QA.” The laptop was equipped with LPDDR5X-8448 memory and ran Windows 11 build 26100.
