- Qualcomm has added three new Snapdragon X Plus chipsets to its lineup of PC chipsets.
- A new X1P-66-100 SKU offers 10 Oryon CPU cores and a single-core boost up to 4.0GHz. The GPU performance remains the same at 3.8 TFLOPs.
- The remaining two SKUs (X1P-46-100 and X1P-42-100) pack 8 Oryon CPU cores, but the GPU performance has been reduced significantly.
At IFA Berlin, Qualcomm has launched three new Snapdragon X Plus chipsets, aimed at bringing affordable Windows laptops to the market. In the newly launched lineup, CPU cores have been lowered and the GPU power has been dramatically reduced.
The new Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-66-100) SKU packs 10 Oryon CPU cores (X Elite packs 12 cores) with a single-core boost up to 4.0GHz and the Adreno X1-85 GPU can deliver graphics performance up to 3.8 TFLOPs.
It sits above the existing Snapdragon X Plus variant (X1P-64-100). The only difference with this new SKU is that you get a single-core boost up to 4.0GHz which is not available on the X1E-64-100 variant. GPU performance remains the same.
Next, the Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-46-100) SKU packs 8 Oryon cores with 30MB of total cache (other SKUs offer 42MB). And it can boost a single core up to 4.0GHz. However, the Adreno X1-45 GPU is weaker, delivering a total output of just 2.1 TFLOPs.
Finally, the last Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-42-100) SKU is the weakest among all the variants. It brings 8 Oryon cores with 30MB of total cache. Its standard frequency is 3.2GHz but it can boost a single core up to 3.4GHz, an increment of 200MHz. The Adreno X1-45 GPU is much weaker here. It can only do 1.7 TFLOPs, a reduction of 50% GPU power which is pretty significant.
While the CPU performance is expected to be good on these new Snapdragon X Plus chipsets, I am not impressed by Qualcomm’s decision to reduce the GPU performance by half. The Adreno X1 GPU is not the most performant GPU in the PC market, and Qualcomm has chosen to diminish the performance even further.
Nevertheless, all Snapdragon X series laptops based on the new X Plus chipsets are eligible for Copilot+ PC features. The NPU is the same across all SKUs, and it can output up to 45 TOPS. Asus is releasing the Zenbook S 15 at $899 and ProArt PZ13 at $1,099 with the new X Plus chipsets. Dell is also launching Inspiron 14 at $899 with the new chipset.
