Snapdragon X Elite Laptops 

It would be awesome if we could get an Asus G14 with this chip and something like an RTX 4060

cool

Hey Dave, when you go to review new laptops could you take apps that have both x86 and arm versions and compare performance across those to see what the penalty on the emulation layer looks like?

Which part was better?

How about the performance hit when running on battery?

Probably a bigger battery.

@@LogicalError007 should that matter from consumer point of view if you are getting bigger battery with lesser price? No one is stopping Apple to do it but then if they did I am pretty sure they will increase price.

​@@LogicalError007 2WH bigger, and more importantly than 2 fans and higher refresh rate, it has an OLED panel, which consumes more energy, it is still getting about the same battery backup. What i am exceited about now is how much it can last after i debloat windows... For context, the idle drain on my 4600H processor is under 4w down from 9w, after removing some bloat and telemetry using winaero, and used to get about 5-7 hours of light usage on my 45Wh batttery. It is about 4 now, as the battery has degraded to 37wh.

​@@LogicalError007 by 3wh so not too much

@@doubly_negative Yeah, for consumer it does not matter. For understanding the efficiency of the chip, it does. Apparently it's not much bigger. So for a 1st gen horizontally integrated laptop, these perform very well with quite a good battery life. I heard there was an update pushed yesterday with many improvements.

On M3 Pro youtube uses around 7W on half brightness (300 nits probably) and 4.8W while video is paused

pun intended?

And not from laptop's fans, air that is

@@untheosource?

My Intel laptop lag as hell When played hd yt video while having a good gaming laptop 🥲

Yeah, I really don't see the point. The battery performance which is its strong point, is only marginally better than x86 last gen. And we know the new gen from both AMD and Intel will be even better.

Microsoft walked so Apple can run Like literally, far before Apple announced their full transition to M1 Apple Silicon, the app support on Windows ARM was extremely poor that almost no one ever wanted it

@@SirMo keep dreaming

@@sihamhamda47 No, Microsoft walked, because they are not able to run. Apple would have done the transition anyway.

​​@@drabekstepanlol that's harsh but the truth. They only run when they see someone finish the race.

And that improved performance also carries over to older ARM Windows laptops. My ProX is finally usable.

In some games it gets like half the performance so it's gpu drivers needs much work .

it's not emulation .......it's translation like rosetta

It's funny how so many doubted Qualcomm about their X Elite performance statements when their engineering team literary IS the original crew that created the designs for the Apple Silicon A and M series chips!!!!

I thought it was like 40%

its besides ''hey guys, this is austin!''

Where's the "it's been nice" lmao

It's still in our head

I miss the “It’s been nice.”

@@sillystuff6247 Yeah, really.

@@sillystuff6247apple when it comes to upgradability 😂

@@Youvkoonly for windows ultrabooks, not for the gaming laptops they are in their own category

@@RandomguyOnetheinternet just because windows has a monopoly on directX. But linux is already good enough for most of the games. Aside from that I am not a huge fan of gaming laptops, they are thick, loud, hot, expensive and work from battery for approximately 2 minutes. For me it always was better to buy a thin laptop with good processor for work and a gaming console.

Sometimes you need them to suck....

EXACTLY 💯! Apple without the original lead engineers are on iteration 3 & 4 and performance and battery life really hasn't been improved. In fact RAM and storage limitations are being seen with M3 Pro and now M4. Whilst the original Appl3 Silicon tram left Apple, started Aura (4got the name) and got absorbed by Qualcomm) released version 1 in under 1.3 years and matching Apple's "Silicon version 3" Qualcomm is adjusting their entire business around X Elite and future and trust it's going to be sublime. By end of 2025 or early 2026 we'll all be like Apple Silicon what?! Who? Where, or with Apple enjoy that junk lmao!😊

To be fair, this is far from the first iteration of Windows on ARM and definitely not the first Qualcomm laptop CPU. Before the current powerful platform, there were Surface RT, Surface RT 2, Surface Pro X, Surface Pro X Gen2, and Surface Pro 9 5G.

This. I was looking forward to these laptops until the whole recall fiasco. Now I would only buy one if I know I can run Linux on one efficiently.

@tmacman0418 I preordered one to run Linux on, but it will be a few months before the support is there in the kernel. It might be there in time for the next wave of distro releases.

Because it has not been released yet for consumers.

@@MadafakinRio Everything is delayed, the Copilot app also got pulled and is still in preview in very limited markets.

It's actually not that different in performance from the current handhelds out there. The main issue is that it's emulation so you lose some performance

​​@@crestofhonor2349Only CPU instructions have to be emulated on ARM, games are more GPU intensive, less CPU. Should be fine performance wise for game logic, the only problem is support from Nvidia and AMD for graphics drivers for Windows on ARM.

I mean the benchmarks it’s getting with emulation is already better than the steam deck. I’m sure somebody’s working on a snapdragon handheld. Can’t wait to see it

@@christianr.5868 I think this is still tough for ARM considering that their main performance competitors are the ROG Ally (X) and Legion Go-type devices, unless they go the more battery-focused or less heat route. I think reviewers will always somehow compare new handheld consoles to these highest-performing handhelds unless they make significant strides in battery life or heat that make performance comparisons moot. Owning an M1 MacBook for daily and an ROG Ally, the Ally blows the M1 out of the water in BG3 and doesn't need to emulate x86, but then again the M1 is a lot older. I'm interested to know how much emulation tanks ARM battery life - I know on the M1 doing emulation was way less battery efficient than running native Apple Silicon apps. And I think that would be ARM's main selling point for handheld consoles - same or better performance in gaming with more battery and less heat; something I wish my ROG Ally had. Also, I really hope they can make FSR 2+ work well on these new ARM chips if they ever reach handheld... they're currently the saving grace for running things like FH5/BG3 on High+ settings, which makes these games look great because a lot of the upscaling "imperfections" is masked by the small screen.

if this chip put on rog ally, it will have 50% performance jump cpu and gpu, and 80% jump in battery life, IF the game support native arm.

Snapdragon X plus will be on par with i5 or i7

Not in the near future.. you really missed a few thing, benchmarks only showed in multi core performance, but 99,9% of your apps are sigle core performance apps.. also he is clearly said it has a decent performance in natively made apps, he didn't even mentioned the performance of those apps what is currently still use x86.. and guess which one is the majority recently, the ARM or x86 based apps..?

*compete

Buddy Snapdragon X elite is literally Devouring Ryzen 5 and I7 based laptops!!

The only limit now is windows itself as an operating system

nice!!

WHAT i need me some

Hefty requirements for the new microsoft recall spyware

​@@enricod.7198Don't you guys get tired?

​@@007alztruliDon't you guys understand?

Huawei Matebook, one of the best laptop of the last 5 years but somehow ignored by reviewers.

@@jpf1978 I keep forgetting that exists

@@jpf1978 I think its ignored because its not readily available in many markets. Also the bad press Huawei recently got.

thinkpad x13

​@@atthelordyeah, West and the EU are free markets only when it's their companies selling the goods and services. Not so free when other regions including China trying to sell the same. Hypocrisy!

Not on my old lcd 😂

nothing new

Its okay. It does look a bit dark on the brightness

​@@Dark.Syndicatei would say that because now we can get a good OLED paired with good battery life, good performance on a 1000 dollar laptop. Being able to keep up with an 60hz LCD macbook air while having a 120hz OLED is an incredible improvement. Also having good performance off the wall on battery

say hello to burn ins in 2 years. ASUS keeps shoving down that tech on their laptops so people would buy new ones every 2 years like their phones.

@Dave2D this is something very important you need to address in reviews!

Reviewers must include cpu version into benchmark charts

This very SKU on the vivobook is the base 78 variant but still performs great. The other versions will have even better numbers than what Dave's shown.

@@fidelisitor8953 It's not that great as expected, especially when competition is also releasing next gen. I've see only selected models with the 80 SKU and IMHO there will be a noticeable difference between 80 and 78.

extensive reviews is not what Dave2D is about

Also need to test compatibility of popular peripherals.

that would be great

First thing I thought of when they first announced the x elite. Man if they can get games optimized for ARM the future of PC handhelds esp in terms of battery life will be bright

It's gonna be on a different level of translation layers that were gonna have since proton as of right now is tailor made for x86 maybe in Steam Deck 3?

@@Jaxv3r the game porting toolkit is basically apples version of proton, and despite running through that translation layer and then rosseta to convert from x86 to ARM, games run pretty comparable to the steam deck, and yes I know Apples silicon is at the top of ARM performance, but it still shows its not impossible for Valve to design an ARM chip capable of this

better off waiting for Lnuar Lake. Shit is on TSMC 3nm and with huge IPC increase on E cores.

Check out the Yoga 7x, looks great for a similar price!

Lenovo Slim series is my favorite, I hope a Slim 7 series laptop is released with X elite.

@@AbidAli-bo8svwell theres already yoga slim 7x ready!

I have the Lenovo x13s and the absolutely only impressive thing about it is the battery life. It feels like a plastic toy for kids.

@@AbidAli-bo8sv There's a slim 7x with the x elite and a 1000nits OLED display for $1199.

Live long, and prosper

Unwatchable video. This ruined it for me

In fairness, ein Vulkan is just a vulcan.

it's Patrick ​@TheManiac95

FoolCan

that would be sick! also the price could go even lower!

Hate this hyping of products like Framework, Arc browser or Linux, which only small amount of people uses

​@@ataytaygaraev4298so why do you hate it? Apple has always been favored by overconsumerism especially among American customers.. but outside of the US and Canada everyone owns different set of laptops and smartphones.. most of that has to do with financial constraints and a tech that's more convenient to use. And I don't see any problem with that.

@@ataytaygaraev4298 Arc browser is awesome, I don't think it is just being hyped.

@@ataytaygaraev4298 the amount of people using Linux is not small. It's a minority but we're still talking tens of millions of active users...

No one need this loud and battery hungry laptops with x86

@@ataytaygaraev4298 Except they aren't.

There was recently a Lenovo on sale with an 8845HS, 16GB/1TB for $650.

@@ataytaygaraev4298 Watch the video. The Qualcomm chip only has like 10% more battery life than x86 offerings. That's not groundbreaking.

@@ataytaygaraev4298 Amd 7th gen chips are quite efficient and quiet too.

It's that theres no linux support yet for the elite x. It's not a linux problem, it's a driver problem. Qualcomm said in a blogpost they're working on pushing driver's upstream to the new kernels, but there are currently too many problems so that there's nothing to show in a video. (sleep, power profiles, npu drivers, emulation(?), none of those work right now

@@OneGearMode JustJosh tried to install Linux on some of the new lpatops and a bunch of them didn't even have the option to turn off Secure Boot in the BIOS. The HP could but predictably didn't boot. Qualcomm is targeting 6.11 in their roadmap for a lot of features, which at the kernel's bimonthly cadence means... October at the earliest? From that livestream it looks like there were lots of Windows software problems even. Based on the already meh performance and efficiency though, I can't really see much reason to go w/ X1E since Strix Point and even Lunar Lake will be out well before then.

@@lhl Tbh, I'm not really hyped. I see energy efficiency is going to be the new trend, since it makes everything cheaper. Intels lunar lake won't ever beat ARM, next year, qualcomm will produce an even better one is my guess. Qualcomm can sell its small chip to everything: phones, handhelds, laptops, VR stuff. Btw, tuxedo computers is developing an X1E laptop

@@OneGearMode Sadly, I wouldn't hold my breath on the Tuxedo X1E. Per Computex reports: "Tuxedo is trying to release this model before the end of the year, but the implementation team mentions that 'there are still too many pieces of the hardware, software and delivery capability puzzle missing to even begin to set a release date. TUXEDO for ARM will come, but we don’t yet know exactly when." You can see from more serious reviews like the Notebookcheck one (eg vs Dave2D's that compares the X1E to dGPU gaming laptops for battery life, wtf) that the X1E Vivobook basically barely matches up in battery efficiency to similarly specced current Hawk Point and Meteor Lake Zenbook OLED ultrabooks (it ties on Wifi 1.3 and loses by a fair percentage in h.264 and full load). While focused on gaming performance, The Phawx also put out his review that is much more detailed/careful about measuring performance and power - even on Cinebench the X1E loses to Hawk Point on perf/watt, and he covers the huge differences in power and perf between performance/and efficiency modes - something that again, reviews like Dave2D's are actually quite misleading (benchmarks in perf mode, battery life measurement in efficiency mode). I'll wait for Geekerwan's reviews before any final conclusions on efficiency, but what I'm currently seeing leaves me pretty unimpressed by X1E. Again though, since I run primarily Linux on desktop and have 0 interest in Windows 11, sort of a non-starter anyway. I currently have a MBA just for battery life when traveling, so I get the importance of efficiency (and despite Qualcomm's original claims, X1E laptops get nowhere near the MBAs in any battery life scenario).

I just setup Windows to Hibernate instead of sleep. Like what's the harm in waiting an extra second or three?

Oh snap, as in, Snapdragon?

That's a GPU. GPU drivers can improve over time. Not relevant for CPU performance.

@@ramzisabra9235 You didn't get the point. I know the relative difference between a GPU & CPU. I mean in terms of optimisation on Arm and migrating most apps from x86 to Arm , this is already a 3rd generation product. Keep in mind Snapdragon had past efforts , so developers are more commited even OEMs .

@@thomasmatewe I did get your point. My point was that improvements on GPUs are very orthogonal to improvements on CPUs, even when emulation is considered, due to how vastly different they are. Intel drivers over the past year were optimizing DirectX overhead and per-game performance with driver profiles, the latter being something Nvidia and AMD have been doing for decades now - and this is why the performance improvements were so drastic. In this very review, there was just an ~10% performance loss due to x86-to-ARM translation. 1) ARM compilers are already optimized to output efficient assembly given the prevalence of the architecture on everything other than Windows laptops / desktops. A big part of software optimization for CPUs happens on the compiler frontend, which emit architecture-agnostic intermediate code, while the backend is responsible for machine-specific code output. 2) A lot of Windows applications are already running natively on ARM. What you see right now in terms of CPU performance with this is what you get, aging well isn't a factor.

This is looking pretty strong right out of the gate, but I want to see more reviews before getting too excited.

No ecosystem, and ugly design... It's a competitor on many domains, but definitely not all.

@@ThomasVanhelden But if performance and price are competitive, it only boils down to preference

@@kvvint7618 The comment said “all domains.” There are more domains than performance and price. MacBooks maintain their value way better, so this laptop is more expensive to own than a MacBook. It could be your personal preference that you don’t care about design, but having limited integration with other devices is definitely a bummer for many people.

​@@ThomasVanheldenwhat is it with people and echoing "ecosystem ecosystem" all the time???? If you arent rich enough to dump between 10-15 grand on an "echo system" it shouldnt matter...

@@cithr0963 you call them iSheeps

ikr. no idea what he was smoking. many x86 120hz oled laptops sub $1000 exist

@@chiaza7735 rocking an oled laptop i payed 300 for... silly dave

Doesn't really matter, because the first product of them if going to suck anyways and I wouldn't buy an ASUS anyways

The book 4 pro is a great device, do u not like it?

@@illsmith4076 I do I do, don't get me wrong. It's just that I just bought it and it already feels obsolete. Especially considering they released a Book 4 Snapdragon X version with this launch!!

@@illsmith4076 I'm open too anything, but I don't expect that much. HP changed their line-up, that's a bummer, but my next laptop will definitely be a Lenovo.ThinkPad. Dell XPS changed to touchbar, expensive for the performance. MacBook not enough RAM for the price. Lenovo could perform bad too, so I'd take that hit. Open to ASUS, it's not bad, but I have to remain critical. I mean 2014 ASUS still works.

Should run pretty smoothly

X Elite drivers and other code has already been submitted for review to be included in the Linux kernel by Qualcomm themselves, so Snapdragon X will definitely get Linux support as well...

Linux itself should work just fine. The problem will be finding software that will work on it.

@@SilkCrown time to run gentoo

@@SilkCrown There is Box86/64

How are the games performing ? Initially there was at least 30-50% performance loss compared to native windows ( judging from the potential gpu power of m2/3 MacBooks of similar level nvidia gaming laptops )

@@InfinityFishing people are trying and they often do run but very glitchy and stutters. At least in parallels, not ready. A native ARM windows environment may do better though.

I wonder how emulation is going to be in Linux, because QEMU is super slow

@@tablettablete186There are alternates like FEX

@@tablettablete186 I am not worried about emulation on Linux because open source can be compiled natively for ARM. Generally, I expect all libre software to be available natively.

@@LinuxRenaissance I know, my worries are games from Steam...

Based on Josh's tests during livestream, most of these laptops can't even disable secureboot, nor boot from USB. The one that could failed to load fedora arm.

Framework and linux for 0.1% of people, so no one cares about them

@@ataytaygaraev4298 What?

Consider it this way: a competitive market is essential for fair pricing. Encouraging competition prevents monopolies, which can lead to exploitation. When a single entity dominates a market, it can set unreasonable prices and dictate terms that benefit itself, not the consumer. This is true for all products and services. Without competition, companies may start making outrageous demands, as we've already seen in some cases

Because better battery life at a lower price with the same performance. Why wouldn't you?

I think Surface laptop 7 is the most vfm and seems the best out of all the devices for the price. Surface pro isn't as compelling

Never buy ASUS…ever

@@StoicPhilosophyyyy what's vfm

You should actually not give in to impulse buy and wait for the laptop review from all brands and choose the one that will fit you best.

@@ccoco7689 not an impulse buy, it had 100$ for a pre-order and 60 days return.

No. I mean, they don't even have cheaper laptops to start

Yeah, hitting the space bar is super hard. 😫

ARM is more efficient. The x86 instruction set is old af. Once ARM optimization is further along it will leave x86 in the dust.

@@schwuzi We keep hearing these arguments, but still AMD was very close in battery life. I don't really see a huge gap now, but when the M1 came out there was a huge gap to Intel and a smaller to AMD.

​@@schwuziwe keep thinking that but then amd comes out with more power efficient stuff again. idk man

I agree but that 185H + 4050 is a bad comparison. Chances are, that laptop with a dedicated GPU will be heavier, louder, and have worse battery life. Ultrabooks Vs laptops with dedicated GPU are for different markets. I'm sure no one who want graphic performance are looking at ARM when Nvidia is king here. It's more fair to compare it to other ultrabook laptops.

@@ThisLuvee the specific one i was refering to is the lenovo ideapad pro 5i 16 inch. Slightly worse battery life compared to a lower end 155h and arc, but its nothing to scoff at for having a dedicated gpu. I still think arm will replace x86 in the future, or other architectures might come up, but the main point is for a lesser supported architecture and pretty much firsy debut, the pricing have to be good to make it attractive. like when the 155h zenbook 14 came out earlier, it sold out real quick and was only in stock from bestbuy afterwards. i bought that and the msi prestige ai 16, both had issues due to the new chip. I cant imagine the x elite to not have first iteration issues. Getting back to your point, its the cooling solution and the battery and chassis material that make up the bulk of the weight, same for noise. If those two are a concern, I think its better to look for ultra books rather than these new arm chip windows imo. Dollar for dollar, i would take a better suppoerted x86 plus dedicated gpu over first iteration just to be on the safe side.

I agree, AMD is a safer bet

I think it’s great for smaller form laptops like the surface pro to actually get decent performance on integrated graphics without getting hot and having great battery life. To each their own

Yup, the 370 is likely to be at least 20% faster than the 8945HS in CPU and 25-30% faster in iGPU; which will make it ahead of all competition and by a good margin on the graphics/gaming front. Though maybe not quite in performance/watt.

@@christianr.5868 Fair enough but AMD strix points is available even on ASUS's small 13 inch convertible laptop, which can only mean that it's a very efficient chip

@@Son37Lumiere Performance per watt should be interesting, CPU wise should be very efficient but iGPU might not be so unless AMD somehow manage to make RDNA3.5 more efficient than RDNA3.

I, for one, am shocked.

The selling points is battery life and low weight.

Yeah it’s for students or people who just need a laptop that will last and not make a ton of noise while having good enough performance

@@peterdz9573 Can't believe so many people don't get this

I don't believe it 😱

No, he’s 43

I don't think he's 50. Where did you hear that?

That ain’t happening brother

Certainly not a 3050.

What laptop let's you game at 3050 level on battery? Certainly not for over an hour lol

The gaming performance is terrible. The intel meteor lake igpu runs overwatch 2 at 158.1 fps at 1200p high settings (hardware canucks amd v. intel 2024). X elite is running half the fps at a low setting at 1080p. Nvidia and AMD lost ZERO sleep tonight.

@@nanogines Something that costs +2000 USD and doubt this is it.

just saying anything can handle chrome / office tasks, u didnt need to buy an overpriced ARM laptop, x86 one of same price smokes it

Yes

Easily

The RAM prices from Apple suck BUT there are benefits to having Soldered RAM: 1. Lower latency. 2. Lower power consumption.

​But how much considerable difference it makes with latency. ​@@PSYCHOV3N0M

But those RAM is faster like your DDR5 RAM.. they can reach 400GB/s in a laptop (M3 Max), and you need a 8-10channel DDR5 for that, do you have 10 RAM slots in laptop..? Same for GPU, PCIe 4.0 x16 is limited to 32GB/s.. you need PCIe 8.0 x16 slot for GPU to reach 400GB/s between CPU and GPU.. do you have a PCIe 8.0 card..? So are you the person who also refuse to pay more for a SSD, because HDD is the same and cheaper, and the difference is only the transfer speed? Because Apple method is the SSD, and the replaceable parts are the HDD, and HDD and SSD are never be in the same price range...

@@TamasKiss-yk4st The only reason they have to do that is because of no dedicated GPU. They need that RAM bandwidth to keep the GPU fed with data and most dedicated GPUs have better RAM bandwidth (also better performance usually). They are no consumer CPU that can use over 150GB/s of bandwidth (especially the low core counts ones) so this "advantage" is completely in your head. This is precisely why the lower end Apple Silicon actually has 150GB/s bandwidth for both CPU and iGPU, there is no need for more, literally. A traditional computer (laptop or not) with a dedicated GPU doesn't need that much bandwidth for the CPU RAM because there would be no use for it (especially with technology like direct access storage for the GPU). You are being fooled by marketing.

Does that drop because of the settings reverting to balanced instead of performance? Or even after changing settings to performance it doesn't match to plugged in?

@@LogicalError007 Yeah, good question.

i've tested it. 5-10% loss performance. which is really good. still in 120hz, everthing smooth. in x86 2023, you will see like 30%-40% loss and must run in 60hz or ur laptop will be dead in like 4-5 hours. this one can last all the 120hz and bright performance, in 10-12 hours.

Chips don't lose performance when they run on battery... fix your damn settings and it'll run the exact same