A short while after Qualcomm had officially unveiled the Snapdragon X Elite, the company claimed that its latest ARM-based silicon is up to 21 percent faster than Apple’s M3 in multi-core performance. When it comes to being the fastest SoC between the two, Qualcomm was correct in its claims, but not that much regarding accuracy, as you will find out shortly after we take a deeper dive into the latest performance comparison.
Snapdragon X Elite is only 16 percent faster than the M3 in multi-core performance, and that too while sporting a higher core count
Just recently, Samsung’s Galaxy Book 4 Edge with the Snapdragon X Elite was benchmarked using Geekbench 6, and according to earlier specification details, this Windows notebook will sport a portable 14-inch display but may carry a rather high price tag to go along with that new SoC. In both single-core and multi-core results, the Galaxy Book 4 Edge posts respectable numbers, but how does it fare compared to the newly released 15-inch M3 Macbook Air? In multi-threaded workloads, Geekbench 6 reveals that the Snapdragon X Elite is actually 16 percent faster than the M3 and trails behind the latter in the single-core run.
Even though Qualcomm’s upcoming flagship SoC is faster than the M3 based on the latest comparison, the figure is slightly less than the San Diego firm’s claims. However, bear in mind that the Snapdragon X Elite was previously tested at two power limits; 23W and 80W, so it is possible that the SoC obtains a higher single-core and multi-core score with the bigger power draw at the expense of heat and rising temperatures, not to mention battery life if the Galaxy Book 4 Edge would be used without being plugged in.
However, we are still impressed that the M3 can pull off these scores while sporting just four performance and four power-efficiency cores, whereas the Snapdragon X Elite needs to be equipped with a 12-core configuration to actually outperform its newest rival in the ARM notebook space. A fair comparison would be pitting the Snapdragon X Elite against the M3 Pro, but it is likely that the more capable Apple Silicon would obtain a higher multi-core score. For those who will mention that the 15-inch M3 MacBook Air features a fan-less cooling solution, potentially giving the Galaxy Book 4 Edge an advantage, there is one detail to remember.
Geekbench 6 is not a benchmark for measuring long-term, sustained performance, and its single-core and multi-core runs only last for a few seconds. In some cases, running this program might not paint a clearer picture, but at least it will provide some data on the chipset’s capabilities, whether or not there is a fan-less or an active cooling solution installed. We have already reported that without an active cooling fan, the M3 running Apple’s latest MacBook Air models can reach a peak CPU temperature of 114 degrees Celsius when running a benchmark with a longer duration, so perhaps the Galaxy Book 4 Edge could obtain better results when it comes to thermals.
News Source: Geekbench 6
