Since the launch of Apple Silicon and the M1-powered MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, the Windows ecosystem has been working hard to catch up to Apple’s ARM laptops. Qualcomm’s latest chipset could be the answer needed by Microsoft and its partners.
When Apple Silicon’s M1 chipset debuted on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air in 2020, it represented a generational jump in desk-bound computing. The move away from Intel’s x86 platform to Apple’s own ARM-based platform offered significant advantages over the Windows-based competition and older Intel MacBook laptops.
The new MacBooks offered a notable increase in performance compared to similarly specced laptops at the same price. The battery life was extended and could be maintained even when higher performance was demanded. And, of course, Apple ensured that an emulation layer allowed users to run x86-based apps without any lag impacting the experience.
There was no immediate response to match Apple’s advance from the competition. Instead, Windows 10 on ARM, alongside Qualcomm’s ARM-based chips, focused on bringing the benefits of mobile to the platform; many devices, such as Microsoft’s ARM-based Surface Pro X, leaned into connectivity, mobility, and ARM’s instant-on capability.
It’s been relatively calm sailing for Apple’s MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops, now on the third generation of the Mxx chipsets. That’s set to change later this year as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite ARM starts to appear on Windows-powered laptops.
This week, Qualcomm demonstrated the X Elite chipset to a number of reporters, giving them open access to reference design hardware to experience the platform and test several games and apps. While not real-world settings, the broad state of the X Elite can be understood.
Benchmarking-wise, Qualcomm offered several that allowed for a direct comparison with Apple’s current hardware, although some match-ups were noticeable by their absence. In terms of Apple comparisons, Qualcomm was a bit thin, only covering multi-threaded CPU performance in Geekbench 6. Qualcomm claims the X Elite beats the M3, 15,610 to 12,154.
One of the most demanding areas of Windows computing is gaming, where every frame counts, every polygon is needed, and every bit of performance can make a critical difference to the outcome. Qualcomm showed off Baldur’s Gate 3 running on its reference hardware laptop. While it was not a specific gaming laptop, it delivered what appears to be a solid experience.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was running under emulation rather than as a native ARM-based application. Given the weakness of emulation under the Windows On Arm project, this is one of the areas where the X Elite has to deliver.
Qualcomm has taken a long time to reach a point where parity with Apple Silicon is within reach. Apple has a significant head start, and the advantage is that it can tailor macOS to dedicated hardware, while the X Elite will be a more general-purpose chip available to any manufacturer. But the Windows ecosystem needs to reach that parity quickly.
Laptops from various manufacturers will ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite this summer, at which point the victories and the flaws will be apparent, the market demand will come into sharp focus, and Apple will have a yardstick to compare its MacBook laptops to the renewed and hungry competition.
