Apple should be worried Qualcomms Snapdragon X Elite chip threatens to end the dominance of M3 MacBooks, and I played Baldur's Gate 3 on a notebook to prove it

Date:
Thu, 11 Apr 2024 11:19:58 +0000

Description:
Qualcomms new Snapdragon X Elite chip gets an impressive new showcase including Baldurs Gate 3 running on a lightweight notebook.

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When Apple launched the M1 MacBook Air way back in 2020 (damn, that really
was four whole years ago), I was blown away. Now, anyone who knows me knows that Im no Apple fanboy, but I am a colossal hardware nerd, and I was briefly obsessed with the processing power provided by the M1 silicon a system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution that positively demolished competitors at the time.

But Apples rivals havent been slacking. As the MacBook maker worked on its
new M3 chip , AMD powered ahead with mighty new mobile processors, while
Intel did the unthinkable and put an end to its iconic i branding with new Core Ultra CPUs . Meanwhile, Qualcomm unveiled its new Snapdragon X SoCs and now, its throwing down the gauntlet with its upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processor.

I was lucky enough to attend a hands-on session with the new X Elite chips in London this week, and let me tell you: its magical stuff. Qualcomm let me go wild with the prototype laptops they had for hands-on sessions, and after a few initial benchmarks I jumped straight into Baldurs Gate 3, expecting the compact laptop to crumble completely under the hardware demands of 2023s Game of the Year. Well, would you look at that... (Image credit: Future)

But no the game played at a stable 30fps at 1200p resolution (thats FHD stretched on a 16:10 display), with a medium-low custom graphics preset.
Sure, thats hardly mind-blowing performance, but considering the scalability of the Snapdragon X Elite chip for lightweight notebooks and even tablets,
its impressive and whats more, the game was emulated . Native vs emulation

For the uninitiated, emulation refers here to the fact that Baldurs Gate 3 cant run natively on Snapdragon chips its an x86 program, the software architecture used to power Windows on conventional Intel and AMD processors. Qualcomms chips are Arm-based, a different architecture that has historically powered everything from tablets to sat-navs to the Nintendo Switch .

To run x86 (or x64) software that lacks an Arm variant, Windows has to use an x86 emulator, thus providing compatibility. Most Windows apps are x86 as standard, and may not have an Arm-based equivalent and unfortunately, emulation often leads to performance drops and bugs compared to native operation, since it effectively introduces an extra layer of tasks for the processor to run through.

This along with the pool of apps that cant be practically emulated on Arm has historically proved to be a major stumbling block for Windows on Arm (WoA). The Surface Pro 9 5G , an otherwise pretty awesome piece of hardware, was marred by issues arising from its Arm-based Microsoft SQ3 chip. My colleague John Loeffler voiced his concerns about Windows on Arm last year, and Im inclined to agree with him. Its hard to recommend a Windows device
that comes with a list of apps it just cant run . The times, they are a-changing

The drawbacks of emulation make it all the more impressive that Baldurs Gate
3 was playable on the Snapdragon X Elite, but Qualcomm seems confident that the WoA dream is finally going to become a reality.

At the event, its reps touted a wide range of programs and games that are now Arm-compatible (including the long-awaited Chrome for Arm , which was
released earlier this year) and seemed remarkably confident that WoA systems would only continue to improve with better native support and compatibility.

Of course, the X Elite chips do have one critical secret weapon: a powerful
45 TOPS neural processing unit, or NPU .

NPUs are the hot topic of the chipmaking world right now: dedicated chips mounted on an SoC die, which is designed to handle machine learning processes
in other words, AI. More and more software now uses machine learning in some way, and the presence of the NPU which Qualcomm claims is best-in-class against existing consumer competitors allows for tasks to be offloaded from the main CPU and GPU to improve overall performance. It's still amazing to me that something so small can be so powerful. (Image credit: Future)

Its a clever trick that can serve to seriously boost the speed of your
system. For example, I used the streaming software OBS Studio with its AI auto-captioning feature turned on, and when I checked the systems resource
use the CPU load was barely at 10% while the NPU soaked up a large amount of the resource demand. In other words, I still have plenty of CPU and GPU allocation left to run other programs a boon for streamers and content creators who will often have multiple applications running at once.

Ultimately, the success of Qualcomms new chips with Snapdragon X Elite laptops expected to start launching in mid-2024 could be very dependent on Microsofts implementation of Windows on Arm, but the initial showing is strong. With powered-up NPUs along with some of the best performance weve
ever seen from a Snapdragon chip, Qualcomm could be about to take the laptop world by storm. You might also like Snapdragon X could finally deliver
Windows 11 ARM laptops that can rival MacBooks Microsoft wants Windows 12 to run on its own silicon. That's fine by me! Microsoft wants Windows 12 to run on its own silicon. God help us



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/laptops/apple-should-be-worried-qualcomms- snapdragon-x-elite-chip-threatens-to-end-the-dominance-of-m3-macbooks-and-i-pl ayed-baldurs-gate-3-on-a-notebook-to-prove-it


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