Demonstration of a Snapdragon X Elite system at a Microsoft Build 2024 session provides insight into actual performance of Snapdragon Oryon CPU

[Redaktion]

Demonstration of a Snapdragon X Elite system at a Microsoft Build 2024 session has provided insight into the actual performance of the Snapdragon Oryon CPU powering CoPilot+ laptops launched this year. During the session, a Blender Classroom benchmark was run, allowing for rough performance comparisons to current Intel and AMD systems.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Demonstration-of-a-Snapdragon-X-Elite-system-at-a-Microsoft-Build-2024-session-provides-insight-into-actual-performance-of-Snapdragon-Oryon-CPU.841182.0.html

[LL]

That value is pretty poor. I do 29 sec in a 3060 laptop. Maybe when it gets a denoiser will improve. unless it already has and it is bad news.

[DS27]

I think the performance is good for an iGPU.

But it still stinks.

[George]

I'm sorry but no real surprises here.

Similar to what Apple users experienced when Apple moved from x86 to Apples M series, the OS and 'native applications' (IE: compiled for the processor) run well and even faster however those applications that require an emulation layer to run, at best are on par and mostly perform worse.

While MS can recompile THEIR applications to run natively on ARM it will be up to the rest of the industry to ether at least 'optimize' their application for emulation or offer a ARM version.

However the reality is, what EXACTLY are people with this class of laptops (no matter WHAT CPU is inside) expecting to do with them?

After all, these are NOT "mobile workstations".

General light weight 'office tasks' and web based applications? Sure.

[Jmh]

I think the comments here rather miss the point that this classroom scene is being run on Oryon CPU only (as they show/mention in the video...so nono Adreno iGPU activity) hence is actually quite impressive...if all the other settings are indeed matched!!!

[Gallo123]

After all, these are NOT "mobile workstations".

General light weight 'office tasks' and web based applications? Sure.

With light work I don't even understand why people waste their money. Why do you need something this powerful?

I bought a used 10th gen i7 Laptop and I can get 14 hour battery in it, just turn off turbo clock. Runs smoothly office and 20+ browser tabs. And it costs me $300.

[Pikeman]

If you watch the stream, you can see they rendered with 30 samples, not the 300 samples that the demo file defaults to. This puts the Snapdragon Elite's performance in line with a Ryzen 7840U, which can finish the scene in 39 seconds.  For comparison, a Ryzen 5950x does it in 25s and a 4090 does it in 1.9 seconds. Again, these are numbers at 30 samples, so they are not comparable to what's on Blender Opendata.

[Joe]

What exactly is the AMD RX3800? A 512 MB GPU from 2007?

[Tomas]

Honestly if you working with 3D you probably have top of the line custom PC with at least one RTX4090

[LL]

Well these systems to have wide appeal - and with unified memory can surpass the biggest current x86 bottleneck which is VRAM - need to at least compete with a RTX4070 in speed. Then with 32-64GB unified memory can edit an Unreal scene confortably without the minimal VRAM of a 4060.

[Hellish.Mike]

If you watch the stream, you can see they rendered with 30 samples, not the 300 samples that the demo file defaults to. This puts the Snapdragon Elite's performance in line with a Ryzen 7840U, which can finish the scene in 39 seconds.  For comparison, a Ryzen 5950x does it in 25s and a 4090 does it in 1.9 seconds. Again, these are numbers at 30 samples, so they are not comparable to what's on Blender Opendata.

Yeah, cheat. This puts Qualcomm in a difficult position. With 12 ARM cores being on par with 8 cores X86-64 in an application running natively, and TDPs going up to 100w, it shows that they are not bringing anything new to the table. They lose compatibility and don't work magic, Apple achieves better efficiency by controlling hardware/OS/Software and having dedicated ASICs, not because it is ARM.

[Max Power]

This article is confusing. Is it claiming that the program was ported to run on the Oryon CPU or the Snapdragon Elite X SoC? Those are two different chips.

Since Oryon is just a CPU, it doesn't make sense to try and compare its performance against dGPUs and APUs.

[Albertonovski]

These things were always going to suck. I don't know why the media have been shilling so hard for them.

[Albertonovski]

These things were always going to suck. I don't know why the media have been shilling so hard for them.

[The Werewolf]

The actual number of native applications remains small, and details on the new Prism x64 emulator remain scant. Unless the emulator is able to greatly expand Windows on ARM compatibility and performance of x64 apps and drivers, the latest CoPilot+ laptops will likely remain a niche product for the office worker who isn't using much more than Microsoft Office, Outlook, and Teams for their daily tasks.

Thank you. So many of the reviews I've been reading seem to be desperately trying to avoid this issue.

Most software is unlikely to be ported to ARM until (and if) enough people buy into it. So if anyone is relying on third tier software or drivers, it's going to be running in emulation or translated code. Even Apple who has a LONG history of this (this is their third try 68000 -> PowerPC -> Intel -> ARM) has some issues with translated code and they can literally tell their developer community and their customers what platform they need to switch to. Microsoft can't.

Worse (for Microsoft), the one big "payoff", at least in their minds, is Copilot+ and that's Win 11 only - which is tanking big time and ONLY on ARM until the fall since Microsoft literally stiffed Intel and AMD by setting the minimum NPU requirements to 40TOPs after they released new chips with NPUs at 10-15 TOPs.

The reality is that it should come as absolutely no surprise that Windows on ARM will run ARM software about as good as Windows on Intel/AMD will run x64 software. But that's not actually enough a selling point to get people to toss their x64 hardware and not one OEN (including Microsoft) has gone 100% ARM, which means devs have to support BOTH platforms.

As a dev I can tell you, supporting multiple platforms has a real cost, and unless there's enough sales you tend to drop the platform. I can also tell you, businesses do NOT rewrite LOB software until they have absolutely no choice. Notice that the Business models of these two Surfaces are X64???

And everyone keeps forgetting - this isn't even the first time Microsoft tried this. I know the tech press is paying rent to Apple for space up Apple's backside, but they we're the first to go ARM - Microsoft was with the Surface RT ten years ago. It was a colossal flop exactly because all you could run was Office.

If ARM fans want to promote this platform, get one, test the hell out it using off the shelf commercial and OSS x64 AND x32 software and prove that it's up to running it at close to normal speeds with no glitches. Then people will accept it as a compatible equivalent, not a weird, risky toy.