Snapdragon X Plus 8-core vs 12-core: How stark is the difference?

The leaks are true. Qualcomm has officially announced the 8-core variant of its entry-level chip for Copilot+ PCs, the Snapdragon X Plus. That means, laptop/PC manufacturers can develop AI-friendly devices that are also friendly for their markets’ pockets, dropping the price tag as low as $700.

But how different is the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core compared to its original 10-core version?

Qualcomm mentions that the 8-core SoC will focus more on AI capabilities so it can run Copilot+ PC’s flagship features, including the controversial all-knowing Recall or the potential ‘intelligent media search.’ So, that may also mean that it won’t be a superior option for gaming, as its first leaked benchmarks also reveal a slow CPU and GPU benchmark.

The 8-core Snapdragon X Plus comes in two variants, the X1P-46-100 and X1P-42-100. Both are powered by 30 MB of total cache compared to the 10-core’s 42 MB but still get LPDDR5x memory type, 8448 MT/s transfer rate, and 45 TOPS (trillion operations per second) NPU performance even compared to the Snapdragon X Elite.

GPU-wise, however, the two processors do come short against the 10-core X Plus. X1P-46-100 2.1 TFLOPS (one trillion floating-point operations per second) and the X1P-42-100 even downgrades as low as 1.7 TFLOPS. X1P-46-100 also has a boost frequency of 4.0 GHz in single-core while the X1P-42-100 gets 3.4 GHz (single-core).

Laptop and PC manufacturers are set to launch their entry-level Copilot+ PCs at the IFA Berlin trade show later this month. An earlier leak confirmed that Lenovo is set to launch the IdeaPad 5x 2-in-1 and IdeaPad Slim 5x with 8-core Snapdragon X Plus while Samsung has officially announced a 15-inch version of Galaxy Book4 Edge with this chip.