Qualcomm is hitting Apple where it hurts the most

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Qualcomm is hitting Apple where it hurts the most

Just a day after Intel revealed its Lunar Lake laptop CPUs at IFA 2024, Qualcomm is ******* back with a new Snapdragon X Plus chip. The aptly named Snapdragon X Plus 8-core trims down the core count that we’ve seen on a wave of Snapdragon X Elite laptops to undercut the competition from Apple. Qualcomm says that machines sporting the new CPU, which could show up on the list of the

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, will be available to purchase starting today.

The Snapdragon X Plus isn’t new, but this is a new variant of the chip. The major difference is right in the name. This CPU comes with eight cores instead of 10, but Qualcomm is still using a 4nm process, and it says the chip can reach up to 3.4GHz with single-core boosts up to 4GHz. Critically, the chip still sports a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), allowing it to show up in Copilot+ laptops with 45 Tera Operations Per Second (TOPS) of power. Laptops sporting this chip should come with great battery life as well — that’s a common thread we’ve seen with Qualcomm laptops like the new

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.

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Qualcomm

Although this new chip will likely be weaker than the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus and 12-core Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm says it’s still much more powerful than the competition. The company says the chip delivers 108% better performance than the Intel Core Ultra 5 125U at 15 watts in multi-core performance, and that it provides a single-core advantage of 40% at 6W compared to the AMD Ryzen 5 8640U. Qualcomm likes to use these efficiency metrics, showing what it can deliver at certain power levels. As we’ve seen with new x86 laptops like the

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, peak performance numbers are much closer than Qualcomm suggests.

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Qualcomm

Performance isn’t the main draw here, however. Price is. Qualcomm says this new CPU “enables” Copilot+ laptops in the $700 to $900 range. The verbiage here is important because it doesn’t appear Qualcomm is saying that these new laptops will be between $700 and $900 — the company is just saying that price range is possible. Two of the first laptops sporting this chip that we know about, the Asus Vivobook S 15 and ProArt PZ13, are arriving at $899 and $1,099, respectively.

Even if only a handful of laptops can reach down to $700, though, that provides Qualcomm a big advantage compared to the competition from Apple. You’ll spend at least $1,000 on the

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, and that’s with the aging M2 chip. By offering Copilot+ laptops below that price, particularly with requirements like 16GB of RAM, Qualcomm could make a big dent in the mainstream market.

Qualcomm says that laptops with the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core will be available from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, with “select devices” available to purchase now.

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#Qualcomm #hitting #Apple #hurts

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