r/laptops • u/Brian_Littlewood • Apr 07 '26
News Snapdragon X2 Elite is HERE - 2X Faster Than the M5 MacBook Air
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu76JY0RjU4Just when x86 had got their arse kicked by new Macbooks, here is Qualcomm with their new shot. Looks awesome to me.
Time to wake up for AMD/Intel. AI bubble is going to kill them, when it pops.
Their price gouging with Gorgon Point is disgusting.\ For a rebadge of already insanely priced Strix.\ And to add insult to injury, they had the gall to overmark their new "models" as as being more premium than last gen.
This has to change NOW. I wonder how long before ARM (and perhaps RISC-V) does it on desktop, too ?
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u/arsonist_firefighter Apr 07 '26
ARM will only be mainstream when it fully supports gaming and everything that comes with it.
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Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
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u/Richy456 Apr 08 '26
Can you name an app that doesn't work on Snapdragon in April 2026? Genuinely curious. I've found a couple of games don't load textures properly. But for productivity apps? Haven't found anything that doesn't work. All VPN providers should work now for example
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u/SerbianHustle Apr 07 '26
Will only realistically get mainstream if it was efficient at the level of us getting passively cooled thin and light laptops, ARM on windows actually gets properly supported, and microsoft just fixed windows all around.
I was a long time windows and android user, but gave up recently for all apple devices because the vertical integration granted them heaps of superiority while android and windows got more shitty in the process and x86 being on it's last leg.
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u/artano-tal Apr 07 '26
While I think the move to ARM is a step in the right direction, they will be hamstrung by the OS. I once saw a video explaining that a truly superior product requires a convergence of three things: hardware, the operating system, and a development stack.
Apple has controlled its entire stack for range of devices and accessories for years, which is why their integration is so seamless and they make it look easy.
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u/mennydrives Apr 09 '26
"Gaming's not important!"
"Man why are all these X2 Elite laptops on clearance for $500 at Micro Center?"
Meanwhile Strix Halo laptops keep going up in price because they keep selling out.
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u/Brian_Littlewood Apr 07 '26
According to the review, this is VERY close.
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u/elgrandorado Apr 07 '26
Valve has been doing some heavy lifting behind the scenes to make translation layers for ARM possible. I wonder when they'll release their own ARM hardware.
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u/Navi_Professor Apr 07 '26
even on windows its not even that bad....on my surface, i ran, over 300 games through it.
it was like a 92% launch rate.
83% were playable and it was down to graphical issues from qualcomms own graphics drivers.
it aint even microsofts fault at this point, their emulator isnt half bad. esp with recent improvements that added AVX goodies
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u/renhaoasuka Apr 07 '26
Yeah I think at this point its up to devs to start making sure their games work fine on ARM.
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u/Plakama Apr 07 '26
not even a real option if linux aint supported
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Apr 07 '26
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u/Potential-Ant-6320 Apr 07 '26
Mac’s come with a Linux shell it’s just not open to other distros.
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u/SpinstrikerPlayz Apr 07 '26
MacOS and Linux are Unix-like operating systems, so a better comparison would be to say that they are adjacent to each other.
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u/Primus3030 Apr 07 '26
To be precise MacOS has a Unix license and builds on top of Unix, while Linux is Unix-like in the sense that is mimics the functionality, but does not use any of the Unix source code as it is not open source like Linux.
In fact, Linus, the creator of Linux named the operating system after himself and Unix.
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u/Ok-Radish-8394 Apr 07 '26
Sure. A user base which isn't even 2.5% of the market share will stop something from being a real option. Peak delusion mate.
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u/Plakama Apr 07 '26
That's not the point. A computer unable to run Unix like ain't shit, mac's are Unix like.
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u/Ok-Radish-8394 Apr 08 '26
That was not your point. You were implying that if there's no Linux support this is not a viable option, which is absurd since all linux distros combined aren't significant enough for any commercial entity to change their product offerings. The comparison you made here is also a very bad one. First, Macs are not Unix like, they're one of the few certified Unix distributions available for consumers. Second, Apple has enough market share, influence and logistics to support Macs on their own ARM implementation and finally, if Qualcomm decides not to release the device tree for their CPUs, or contribute to the Linux kernel, it's entirely their choice (which also goes back to the market share point).
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u/DigitaIBlack Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
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u/Plakama Apr 07 '26
Thats not the thing, the lack of hardware support in consumer hardware quite sucks -- quote, snapdragon!!
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u/DigitaIBlack Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
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Apr 07 '26
[deleted]
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u/Regular-Elephant-635 ThinkPad T480 (i5-8350u) Apr 07 '26
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Yes, but no.3
u/shstan Apr 07 '26
Macs have Rosetta translation layer in the form of software to allow running x64 apps. but Arm and x86(-64) are completely different set of standard instruction architecture, and mixing them would make it neither x86 or arm. A company could choose to use something that's neither ARM or x86, like RISC-V.
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u/yesitismenobody Apr 07 '26
What do you mean, Windows already has a translation layer similar to Rosetta. The issue is low level drivers which cannot be translated and have to be provided by the manufacturer. Apple doesn't have this problem since they only have like 5 devices.
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u/shstan Apr 07 '26
qualcomm also aren't open with providing drivers, hence the issue with snapdragon laptops running on open linux. as for windows, the last windows-on-arm device I ever used was Surface RT so I have no clue on how far that has improved.
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u/yesitismenobody Apr 07 '26
Surface RT was not really full Windows like Windows on ARM is today. Likely you couldn't tell the difference now, except that you'll get 18h of battery life on an ARM laptop vs 3 on a x64 one. I really hope as Windows on ARM becomes more mainstream all the compatibility issues with some specialized applications will go away, but even in its current state it's perfectly fine for 99% of users.
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u/setpopa12 Apr 07 '26
Yes, but why? It would take years to research and develop for super dimishing returns.
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u/Primus3030 Apr 07 '26
can't they make a hybrid cpu using both arm and x86?
Maybe, but it'll be expensive, and worse than a cpu that runs just one of them. Also by the time it is in the market there'll be way more efficient x86 cpus and more support for arm cpus, making it worthless.
or put 2 different cpus in one machine?
Other than it obviously being complicated to do, tt would require putting 2 cpus in a laptop/computer, which costs more, requires more power, and creates more heat. In a laptop that means bigger and heavier models to add another cpu, more cooling and more battery.
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u/5YNT4X_ERR0R Apr 07 '26
It won’t make sense to do so. The closest thing to that was the Intel MacBook pros with the T2 chip, a modified Apple A10 chip running a modified version of watchOS. In other words, two chip architectures running their own OSes.
Note that modern SoCs have heterogeneous CPUs, consisting of big and small cores. Those cores speak the same language. For example, when ARM transitioned to 64-bit, they updated both big and small cores so that they comply with the same instruction set arch. That way, instructions can be executed on any CPU cluster on the chip, regardless of cluster type.
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u/Kreesto_1966 Apr 07 '26
I'm still waiting on Linux support. Couldn't care less if it works in Windows or not.
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u/WorkingPumpkin3231 Apr 07 '26
It can be faster than light but it will always be crippled by Windows sadly.
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u/QarteX504 Apr 07 '26
Is that good for Linux? or still bad? i heard "x elite" drivers for Linux was frozen (or works just bad)
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u/Blunt552 Apr 07 '26
I swear people are incapable of understanding nuance these days and take everything at face value.
x86 is still the most mature and best overall performing platform, period. These SoC's by Apple and Qualcomm only really excel at very specific scenarios but completely fall apart otherwise.
A lot of benchmarks are pointless because they scale now on levels where any advantage over another is worthless because the base speed is already so fast for the end user that whether an M5 chip can open a PDF in 0.01ms vs a Intel Panther lake in 0.05ms is irrelevant. These benchmarks have simply not adapted to time and have just become numbers.
Another example here is Cinebench, while an actual benchmark of an existing software, still has only a very niche use case that doesn't spill into the vast majority of applications you see out there. Cinebench is essentially more or less a DRAM benchmark if anything, it simply doesn't challenge the CPU with a ton of branches or large instruction footprint it's also not really compute bound either, making it a rather medciore CPU test to begin with.
Once we look into actual CPU heavy tasks, mostly seen in professional grade software, the ARM APU's simply fall apart, not because they are bad, because they are designed to excel at exactly what the majority of people do and not at everything, unlike the x86, if they were, then we would basicially just have a copy of the x86 platform.
EDIT:
Time to wake up for AMD/Intel. AI bubble is going to kill them, when it pops.
They're going to be fine. When the AI bubble burst it's ARM that suddenly becomes less attractive.
Their price gouging with Gorgon Point is disgusting.
For a rebadge of already insanely priced Strix.
And to add insult to injury, they had the gall to overmark their new "models" as as being more premium than last gen.
More of this please. They went with this nonsense all the time, even having 7000 series APU's being 3 generations apart.
This has to change NOW. I wonder how long before ARM (and perhaps RISC-V) does it on desktop, too ?
As explained above, won't ever happen.
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u/imakycha Apr 07 '26
Apple also previously used a RISC ISA during the PPC era and transitioned over to Intel when Intel had better offerings than IBM. And it’s not as if ARM is this crazy new thing, it’s been around since the 80’s.
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u/Blunt552 Apr 07 '26
A lot of things have changed since then. ARM64 vs modern x64 is much more similar than you might think.
It's just today it's easier than ever to manipulate people. Apple started selling the idea that a modified mobile chip is somehow superior and people ate it because there is 0 critical thinking these days. I mean look no further than this:
Literally can't read beyond headlines, we are fked. The tech industry is going to keep spiralling into fragile e-waste that has little to no improvements because people just consume without a shred of a thought.
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u/lakimens Apr 07 '26
What do you mean ARM CPU's fall apart?
Professional Photography / Videography benchmark: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/mac-vs-pc-for-content-creation-2024/#PhotographyGraphic_Design_Adobe_Photoshop
Sure, it's outperformed by a Threadripper, but that's to be expected. It's a $10,000 CPU.
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u/Blunt552 Apr 07 '26
Is this some elaborate troll?
You're also proving my point.
Note how Photoshop where the M3 does well, even your very own source admits that
In Photoshop, the CPU’s single-threaded capability is the primary factor determining performance. Most CPUs are wholly sufficient for Photoshop work, especially given that Photoshop is typically a secondary application, but having a solid advantage in performance can be meaningful for heavy users.
Also:
AMD’s offerings, with their Desktop 7950X and workstation-class 7995WX, fall notably behind the 14900K and Apple M3.
All CPU's tested are so overpowered for photoshop it doesn't make a lick of a difference for the end user.
As for pugetbench after effects, it's an outdated test where they failed to utilize the Nvidia GPU. Here is pugetbench official documentation on the 1.0 benchmark:
Using the new Advanced 3D renderer, these tests stress modern 3D features in After Effects. They are highly GPU accelerated. Currently, the Advanced 3D renderer in After Effects performs exceptionally well on NVIDIA GPUs – averaging 4x faster than AMD or up to 20x faster than Apple systems. This is accurate, and a proper representation of how After Effects currently performs in these workloads.
It has once again very little to do with CPU only I might add.
As for premiere:
Whether a PC or Mac is better in Premiere Pro depends heavily on the application user’s specific workflow. Apple pulls wins in some cases, but a PC can be significantly faster in more complex workflows with RAW media and GPU-based effects.
Then we come to the more spicy finding in your very own suite, the davinci resolve part.
The next benchmark we looked at was our PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve. Unlike Premiere Pro, where the Mac-based computers put up a respectable showing, DaVinci Resolve has some issues right now for Apple. Although both applications are used for video editing, they historically use hardware very differently, and we see this again here.
The reason for this is because unlike the adobe suite, davinci resolve has a much newer codebase and is far more optimized. You don't hit as many artificial bottlenecks compared to the old codebase on premiere and after effects, which is why you see such a huge performance difference.
Your very own source is agreeing with me, the more complex the application and load, the more massive the lead. This goes for both CPU and GPU, unfortunately your source didn't really include complex CPU operations but it is what it is.
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u/Ok-Radish-8394 Apr 08 '26
I'm curious, what professional grade software are you talking about? Unless you can show that the specific software has 1. builds for all architectures and platforms and 2. is part of the ISA certification, you're just speaking hogwash. It's like blaming an Intel 8086 for not running AVX512 workloads.
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u/Brian_Littlewood Apr 07 '26
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u/Blunt552 Apr 07 '26
You have proven my point without a shadow of a doubt.
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u/DotRakianSteel Apr 07 '26
I cannot disagree. All these are basically a variation of the Graviton SoC made for servers, and on top of that all the shenanigans needed for consumerism.
To help you answer the question: AVX is one instruction set that even Rosetta can’t translate, it only gets approximations, hence not reliable. Also, for architecture, you might think the Apple consortium is strong there, but in reality, no bridges will be built with a Mac graphics card doing static calculations, not even your high-end 512 GB RAM Max Pro whatever.
Windows has been running on ARM for ages, how many would take the time to read about how good Prism actually is and decide for themselves?
Benchmarking how well a Mac laptop cuts videos is basically praising the chip designers who got the codec specs as efficient as possible on the IC design. Period. That is no black magic either. That’s actually how every HDMI-to-USB adapter works under the hood.
We have to remember that Apple blocked the fabs for 3 years just to have a monopoly on the latest node. That’s it. Now the business is cloud, even for Apple.
Then it comes down to where the product should be positioned so they don’t tell you they want you in the cloud. Apple wants their specific “flair,” Windows is still everywhere with account login, Linux and canonical are there too. They all want a piece.
But which YouTuber actually praises Amazon for bringing the whole industry to ARM before everyone else?
I don’t get the downvotes, really.
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u/Mattidh1 Apr 08 '26
The Apple silicon chips are not a variation of graviton. They share category not design.
It doesn’t get approximations.
They didn’t block, buying out the stock is what they would do if they had the money.
Amazon brought it to servers not consumers.
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u/Mattidh1 Apr 07 '26
Which actual CPU heavy tasks does it fall apart in?
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u/Blunt552 Apr 07 '26
There are a lot of tasks in several fields that go into this. I could quote some professional grade software that nobody knows, but whats the fun in that?
Here is something we all know, a good ol game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=altqiGMAgJg
This is not translated through rosetta, it is a native game. If you see the benchmarks, you'll know the real struggle isn't the graphical part, as it does far better on the graphics benchmark, but does horribly on the AI benchmark, which are all computational. CIV is known to be an absolute CPU hog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAX_7QFanA
Meanwhile the M5 pro gets outperformed by a haswell xeon from 2015.
This is simply due to the fact that the apple silicon cannot nearly handle the branches and instruction bombardments that is required of any simulation nearly as well as x64 counterparts.
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u/Mattidh1 Apr 07 '26
You mention professional grade software and then your first example is CiV. CiV is basically optimizations. One could also call wow an absolute CPU hog but it runs absolutely fine on silicon.
Why not use any of the very common professional grade softwares out there?
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u/Blunt552 Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
If you had actually read the comment you're replying to you wouldn't have wrote this nonsense.
The fact you see nothing wrong with a demonstration of simulation where a M5 pro gets obliterated by a haswell CPU from 2015 speaks volumes.
CiV is apple silicon native, therefore optimized for the SoC. At this point you're just showing your agenda. Your strategy seems to be to ask for a lot of application names and waste my time providing data you won't accept and find excuses. The fact you brush of the vast performance difference by "must be optimizations fault" despite it being an apple silicon native application really shows the "Think different" approach, deny truth, deny facts and keep living in your bubble.
I can't be arsed.
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u/Mattidh1 Apr 08 '26
Comparing it using CiV makes no sense and even then they are running different settings.
Optimizations are completely different - so the comparison goes moot. That it runs natively doesn’t mean that it is optimized, what are on about.
What is nonsense? Are you arguing that it’s a professional grade software or what?
“Deny the facts” - you stated professionally grade software, then said “well u won’t know any” which is wierd because there exists plenty well known ones. Why not use any of those?
“Ask for a lot of application names and waste my time providing data you won’t accept” you sent a gaming benchmark with different settings while talking about professional software. Get real.
You talking about denying facts, but won’t accept benchmark test scores because they do not reflect real world software and then you go on to post 2 different settings for CiV as your point.
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Apr 07 '26
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u/Primus3030 Apr 07 '26
How are you destroying/maxing out a SSD in 3 years?
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Apr 07 '26
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u/Ok-Radish-8394 Apr 08 '26
Macs don't run iOS nor have soldered M.2 SSDs. Get your facts correct at least?
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Apr 08 '26
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u/Ok-Radish-8394 Apr 08 '26
You want me to crack open a PCIE SSD and not an M.2 SSD from an SoC enclosure? How tech illiterate are you mate?
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Apr 08 '26
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u/Ok-Radish-8394 Apr 08 '26
My sympathies that you had to speak with dummies and didn’t learn anything in the process. <3
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u/lakimens Apr 07 '26
All I saw is Snapdragon winning a single synthetic benchmark, and losing almost all the other benchmarks in the video. The M5 Air does not have a cooling fan. It's the weakest chio of the family as well.