Snapdragon X Plus with eight cores: New chipset makes AI notebooks more affordable

Like the other Snapdragon X chipsets, the new X Plus with eight computing cores is also expected to achieve 45 TOPS with its NPU (AI chip). However, it has fewer and sometimes lower clocked computing cores available for classic computing tasks.

Same performance with NPU, slightly less with CPU and much less with GPU

As the name of the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core suggests, its CPU has eight processing cores. The previous Snapdragon X Plus has ten, while the Elite variants even have twelve. The most important feature of the system-on-a-chip is not affected by the reduced number. As with all models, its Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which is responsible for AI applications, is expected to achieve 45 TOPS.

In addition to two fewer cores, there are further reductions in the CPU: Its cache is reduced from 42 to 30 megabytes. The single-core performance of up to 3.4 GHz is identical to the previous Snapdragon X Plus. The multi-core performance of 3.2 GHz is slightly lower than the 10-core chipset, which offers 3.4 GHz.

The differences in graphics calculation are much greater. The Adreno GPU of the Snapdragon X Plus with eight cores achieves 1.7 TFLOPS. The iGPU of the 10-core variant achieves more than double that with 3.8 TFLOPS. This is despite the fact that the graphics performance in tests has proven to be the weak point of the better Snapdragon X.

The Copilot+ PCs - i.e. notebooks - with the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core will be available from 799 dollars. Qualcomm did not name any prices in francs or euros. By way of comparison, the cheapest Copilot+ PC to date is the Surface Pro, which starts at 999 francs or euros. Qualcomm names Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, among others, as manufacturers of the cheaper notebooks with the new chipset. <p