Systems powered by Snapdragon X, a new series of laptop CPUs from Qualcomm that is said to include the most powerful computing processor that has ever been created for PCs—the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite—will be available for purchase at prices as low as $700 next year, according to new comments shared by Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s CEO and president. The first wave of Copilot+ PCs, which are powered by Snapdragon X Elite (12 core) and Snapdragon X Plus (10 core) processors, have been available since June 18.
From a report:
- “‘As we look forward to 2025, in addition to new design wins, our X series product roadmap will expand to address PCs with retail prices as low as $700 without compromising NPU performance,’ Qualcomm CEO and president Cristiano Amon just said on the company’s Q3 2024 earnings call.”
- “Amon did not necessarily say the cheaper machines would be laptops — the company’s chips can also power small desktops like its eight-inch Dev Kit. He only spoke to price.”
- “Qualcomm isn’t breaking out any sales or financial numbers for its first wave of Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus laptops in earnings just yet, saying it’s ‘too early’ to tell, but confirmed that ‘we’re already working with OEMs on the next wave of Copilot Plus PCs.'”
- “Amon says that more PC product announcements are coming at IFA, which begins the first weekend of September, and that he believes Qualcomm will be ‘one of the top silicon suppliers’ for AI PCs going forward.”
A look at the Snapdragon X lineup:
Recent promos for Microsoft’s new Surface devices, which are powered by Qualcomm’s chips:
Some performance claims from Qualcomm:
…Snapdragon X Elite…delivers the highest NPU performance per watt for laptops, up to 2.6X vs. M3 and up to 5.4X vs. Core Ultra 7. With the integrated Qualcomm Hexagon NPU architecture, it can deliver up to 24 TOPS/watt peak performance in uses cases like Super Resolution and with our leading Qualcomm Oryon CPU, Snapdragon X Elite leads in performance per watt, matching competitor peak PC CPU performance at 60% less power.
Discussion (2 replies)
Join Discussion →Sometimes I dont get the pricing strategy of mini pcs. I like mini PCs, and I mean mini. But often they overprice things, what is a mini pc, but much less than a laptop?. No screen, no battery, way less research /testing for a cooling solution, and no need for any power management either, just a feral cpu, along similiar components. Yet with all the obvious savings, many mini pcs that are more powerful, are just priced too high. I do have mini pcs, even though they are quite low end, they are fine I guess at less than 200$ on sale.
Look, as far as the ARM thing goes, it might not be for me, at least not for most of my devices (I already have a few ARM-based Odroid SBC's for my Kodi/MyhtTV frontends) but I'm all for there being options in the marketplacec.
The NPU's are just silly though. Nobody needs (or even really wants) that except for a few AI fanboys.