Qualcomm renews its bet on Windows ARM laptops: the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is up to 85% more powerful than its predecessor

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Qualcomm renews its bet on Windows ARM laptops: the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is up to 85% more powerful than its predecessor
qualcomm renews its bet on windows arm laptops: the snapdragon

These days Qualcomm is launching: He first presented his new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 for mobile phones and a few hours ago we met his curious Snapdragon G3x for portable consoles, but these launches are joined by another that is also striking.

It’s about the new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, the third revision of its Windows ARM-based notebook SoC. At Qualcomm they promise notable performance improvements for the CPU and GPU, but many of us are waiting here not for the new from Qualcomm, but the hopeful Nuvia chip.

A decent bet, but far from what Apple’s M1s pose

Qualcomm’s proposal consolidates that project that this company started with Microsoft for the Windows ARM-based notebook development that would pose a real alternative to those we already have based on x86-64 chips from Intel and AMD.

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The promise was never kept. Power and efficiency weren’t bad, but they weren’t bright enough, and it didn’t help the fact that Microsoft didn’t go too far, either. with a Windows for ARM that is totally in the background. And if not, let them tell the Surface Pro X.

The new Qualcomm chips reinforce its ACPC strategy (‘Always Connected PCs’, ‘Always Connected PCs’) and benefit from a fundamental advantage: the use of a 5 nm photolithography that allows higher density of transistors and offers greater efficiency and more power.

Qualcomm itself promises up to 85% more performance for the CPU and up to 60% more for the GPU, and all this with remarkable efficiency that, according to the manufacturer, allows equipment with autonomies of more than 25 hours. The figures are remarkable, but today it is just that: figures.

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Connectivity is also strengthened with the support for 5G networks, but also with Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E support. Many options are derived from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, such as support for cameras that record 4K in HDR – quite another thing is that a laptop integrates such a camera, something that none of them does natively today – or its chip artificial intelligence, three times more powerful than the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2.

The proposal is certainly interesting, but the first benchmarks leaked on Geekbench show returns maximum of 1010 points in single-core and of 5,335 in multi-core, when Apple’s M1 chips from a year ago scored 1,750 points in single-core and 7,700 in multi-core.

That makes clear the advantage that Apple continues to have in this area. It remains to be seen, however, what other manufacturers have prepared for us that seem to be working hard to offer alternatives to these Snapdragon 8cx – and to the even more modest Snapdragon 7c from a few months ago.

Of all those alternatives, there is one that we especially look forward to: it is Nuvia’s, a company acquired by Qualcomm itself in early 2021 and founded by former Apple engineers. Qualcomm’s own executives claim that those chips will outpace those of Intel and AMD in laptops, but until that time comes – if it comes – we have a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 that of course up the ante.