Apple does a great job with its Apple Silicon “M” chips for computers because they provide more performance without consuming power. too much power. On the other hand, Qualcomm and Microsoft are trying to create a competitor to Apple Silicon Mac. Although early attempts were unsuccessful, it looks like Qualcomm's latest processor has finally surpassed the Apple M1 and is catching up to the M2 in performance.
Qualcomm's new processor is almost as fast as the M2
As reported by Windows Latest , benchmark results for Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 chip, known as Hamoa, have appeared on Geekbech. Interestingly, while previous versions of Qualcomm's ARM chips failed to beat the Apple M1, this one finally does.
Geekbench test results for the new Qualcomm processor show a single-core score of 1197 and a multi-core score of 1197 of 9337. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 has eight performance cores and four efficiency cores. Both the M1 and M2 have four performance cores and four efficiency cores. But how do all these chips compare?
M1 and M2 are still much better in single-core performance. However, since the new Snapdragon chip has more cores, it was able to surpass the multi-core performance of the M1 and came very close to the performance of the M2.
| Single-core | Multi-core | |
| Apple M1 | 2334 | 8316 |
| Apple M2 | 2589 | 9742 |
| Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 | 1107 | 5893 |
| Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 | 1197 | 9337 |
The report mentions that the new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 is being developed by Nuvia, a startup based in 2019 by former engineers from the Apple Silicon team and acquired by Qualcomm in 2021 for $1.4 billion. These engineers are believed to be behind recent advances in ARM processors for Windows PCs.
Numbers are not all yet
Best comment from RM
According to the SlashGear article, since around the M2's debut, GB v5 scores have been 1,920 for single-core processors and around 9,000 (8,928 in this article's test) for multi-core. Compare this to the Qualcomm chip: the single-core M2 result is 1.6 times faster, and the multi-core Qualcomm is 3-12 PERCENT faster (i.e. 1.03 times). And it uses 50% more cores (that is, 4 more) than the M2. So no, nothing Qualcomm produced came even remotely close to the M2, because anyone can crudely add cores to a product and make it bigger. This completely ignores the fact that GB 6 changes the base score and the way the tests are administered. The single-threaded metric, which all applications use and which is the first thing you'll encounter as a speed difference when actually using the computer, is still significantly slow. Slower than anything Intel or AMD are releasing today for laptops and such, compared to Apple? I can't even see Qualcomm in the rearview mirror
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Of course, pure performance numbers aren't everything, and there are a few other things to pay attention to. For example, because Qualcomm's chip has more cores, it may not be as power efficient as Apple's chips. In other words, while it may provide better performance, it may also end up consuming more power, which is not good for laptops and tablets.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, although The M2 has been available since then. In 2022, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 is still in development. The first Windows PCs powered by Qualcomm's new chip are expected to hit the market by the end of the year or early 2024.
Meanwhile, Apple is preparing to announce the first Macs with the M3 chip, which is also expected to be unveiled in the next few months. And since the M3 will certainly bring another performance boost to Apple Silicon Macs, Qualcomm will be busy trying to beat Apple's chips for a long time.
Still, it's good to see other companies investing in ARM-based PCs as well. . Intel, which has already lost Apple and may soon lose other PC suppliers, should be concerned about this situation.
