First Reviews are Live and Snapdragon X Elite Doesn't Quite Deliver on Promised Performance

[TheinsanegamerN]

I think the 15 hour battery life is the impressive bit, if you're hoping for it to crush x86 on a price/performance point it's not going to happen just yet.

The fact that it's running windows even in emulation acceptably is a huge nail in the coffin for x86. I think alot of people will pick these up for the battery life alone.

Except that, according to reddit users, these two cases are exclusionary. You can have 15 hour battery life OR run emulated apps, but not both. When doing both battery life is comparable to cheaper more powerful x86 machines.

I'll give apple this, this is something they fixed before launch. By all accounts macOS ARM binary translation battery life is still really good.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

So, they lied, just like every single time that intel marketing shows anything new.

Thats a good trait to copy.

 

[wNotyarD]

Except that, according to reddit users, these two cases are exclusionary. You can have 15 hour battery life OR run emulated apps, but not both. When doing both battery life is comparable to cheaper more powerful x86 machines.

I'll give apple this, this is something they fixed before launch. By all accounts macOS ARM binary translation battery life is still really good.

Apple had the benefit of hardware control, and actually killing x32 support before transitioning from x86_64 to ARM64. Lotsa less legacy to carry around and translate with Rosetta.

 

[phanbuey]

Apple had the benefit of hardware control, and actually killing x32 support before transitioning from x86_64 to ARM64. Lotsa less legacy to carry around and translate with Rosetta.

Plus they did it before with PowerPC to x86, and they were doing it the whole time porting apps to iOS from OSX.

They were already porting when the iPad Pro came out. On top of having a tighter software stack, they spent at least 10x the time and money porting.

Bottom line is, you cant come out with a $1300 machine that gets beaten by $900-$1000 machines on all sides. I can't imagine these are selling well.

 

[Beermotor]

Every year we're promised that ARM will replace x86 in the performance category, and the next new ARM processor is hyped up. Every year that hype dies because it turns out the ARM processor isn't as fast. Someday it might happen, but looks like, yet again, it's not this year.

Yes indeed. Back in the 90s the DEC Alpha and PowerPC chips were supposed to definitely supplant x86 and an almost exact scenario played out both times.

ISA compatibility is a gigantic brick wall that consumers don't want to have to surmount.
They'll just keep buying x86 and just deal with the minor inconvenience of slightly more frequent charging.

 

[wNotyarD]

Bottom line is, you cant come out with a $1300 machine that gets beaten by $900-$1000 machines on all sides. I can't imagine these are selling well.

Especially not when no one actually knows how they perform all-around. WHERE ARE THEM REVIEWS?

But I might add that even the sample of 1 device that we know something of has actually better results than I expected. Compared to the pathetic 8cx, Qualcomm evolved leaps and bounds with the X Elite.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Especially not when no one actually knows how they perform all-around. WHERE ARE THEM REVIEWS?

Apparently it's because of Microsoft that there aren't any more reviews.

x.com

x.com

 

[wNotyarD]

Apparently it's because of Microsoft that there aren't any more reviews.

View attachment 351898

x.com

x.com

Yep, I did read about it in another forum. Call it a blunder if I ever seen one

 

[R0H1T]

Every year we're promised that ARM will replace x86 in the performance category, and the next new ARM processor is hyped up.

Well Apple could in theory wipe out the entire sub $1k Windows laptops if they weren't so greedy SoB's ~ so no you're wrong about "ARM" as a whole! Having said that, like I said in other threads, it really depends a lot on the software you use

Apple MacBook Air 13 M3 review - A lot faster and with Wi-Fi 6E

We tested the new MacBook Air M3 with a faster 10-core graphics card, Wi-Fi 6E and 16 GB RAM.

www.notebookcheck.net

Apple MacBook Air 15 M3 review - Apple’s large everyday MacBook gets a power up

Notebookcheck reviews the new Apple MacBook Air 15 with the M3 SoC, 16 GB of RAM and Wi-Fi 6E.

www.notebookcheck.net

 

[wNotyarD]

Well Apple could in theory wipe out the entire sub $1k Windows laptop if they weren't so greedy SoB's ~ so no you're wrong about "ARM" as a whole! Having said that, like I said in other threads, it really depends a lot on the software you use

Technically, the M1 MBA Air is a banger for what it costs now (~USD720 around here). If only this price wasn't for that measly 8G/256G configuration...

 

[R0H1T]

Yes if they offered even a reasonably priced 16GB/1TB ~ RAM &/or NAND upgrade they'd have a lot more market share!

 

[persondb]

However, it's not all doom and gloom, as the Qualcomm chip delivers an impressive memory latency of a mere 8.1 ns

The memory latency is better than L3 latency of most chips?

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

DEC Alpha and PowerPC

Alpha was killed by Compaq, because they believed the lies stated by Intel with the upcoming Itanium.

PowerPC failed mostly because of Apple.

The original plan was to have an open platform (CHRP) that would accept all OS (Win NT, OS/2, Unix and MacOS)

NT and Unix were ported, OS/2 was delayed (and then canceled) and Apple pretended to be stupid and never released MacOS as originally planned (they went with the clones though.)

Everyone bailed, Apple volumes weren’t enough to sustain the development cost and ended moving to Intel.

Its more complicated than that (and I’m going by memory) but its the gist as to why PowerPC died.

 

[R0H1T]

Intel had the most efficient desktop & laptop processors at the time, surely that helped right? Talking about Conroe so 2005/06 or slightly later.

 

[AnotherReader]

Alpha was killed by Compaq, because they believed the lies stated by Intel with the upcoming Itanium.

PowerPC failed mostly because of Apple.

The original plan was to have an open platform (CHRP) that would accept all OS (Win NT, OS/2, Unix and MacOS)

NT and Unix were ported, OS/2 was delayed (and then canceled) and Apple pretended to be stupid and never released MacOS as originally planned (they went with the clones though.)

Everyone bailed, Apple volumes weren’t enough to sustain the development cost and ended moving to Intel.

Its more complicated than that (and I’m going by memory) but its the gist as to why PowerPC died.

The failure of RISC to supplant x86 was clear when the Pentium Pro became the SpecInt champion.

 

[TheLostSwede]

The memory latency is better than L3 latency of most chips?

But does it matter in real world applications?

 

[AnotherReader]

But does it matter in real world applications?

DRAM latency can not be better than L3. Either the test is flawed or their prefetchers are very good.

 

[TheLostSwede]

DRAM latency can not be better than L3. Either the test is flawed or their prefetchers are very good.

Well, they didn't post cache latencies.

 

[bonehead123]

Asus went with a fairly basic Micron 2400 SSD which is a DRAM-less Phison based drive and this might be part of the reason for some of the less flattering results

Well knowing AsSus they way I do, this was merely ANUTHA way for them to shave a few pennies off their build costs, that's all !

Considering that the Vivobook S 15 OLED comes in at US$1300 with 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB SSD, you would expect it to deliver in terms of performance, but it seems like Qualcomm and Microsoft have a lot of work to do to optimize the platform as a whole.

Yes I would not only expect it to deliver, but DEMAND it for that price, and YES, they have ALOT of work to do before they can really make any substantial performance wins over other lappys already out there...I realize this basically a Gen 1 product in most respects, but just sayin, all the hype is apparently just that, so far !

Also, those specs aren't much to brag about, as again, there a many better-spec'd lappys out there in this price range that will outperform it...

 

[ymdhis]

It obviously did not deliver as it did not have AI in the product title.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Well Apple could in theory wipe out the entire sub $1k Windows laptops if they weren't so greedy SoB's ~ so no you're wrong about "ARM" as a whole! Having said that, like I said in other threads, it really depends a lot on the software you use

Apple MacBook Air 13 M3 review - A lot faster and with Wi-Fi 6E

We tested the new MacBook Air M3 with a faster 10-core graphics card, Wi-Fi 6E and 16 GB RAM.

www.notebookcheck.net

Apple MacBook Air 15 M3 review - Apple’s large everyday MacBook gets a power up

Notebookcheck reviews the new Apple MacBook Air 15 with the M3 SoC, 16 GB of RAM and Wi-Fi 6E.

www.notebookcheck.net

Apple's not interested in budget machines nor the audiences they attract and the problems they bring.

Apple had the benefit of hardware control, and actually killing x32 support before transitioning from x86_64 to ARM64. Lotsa less legacy to carry around and translate with Rosetta.

32 bit is arguably a lot easier to emulate then x64 is, and it destroyed a lot of backwards compatibility. Not that apple has ever cared, but the windows world cant get away with such actions.

 

[R0H1T]

Even if it's not a grand slam(?) it's still a great first try. This should hopefully lower prices from Intel/AMD & if sun starts setting in the east then Apple as well

Apple's not interested in budget machines nor the audiences they attract and the problems they bring.

One can hope because maybe/eventually they'll run out of sheep?

 

[destruya]

So in other words, wait a month or two and you'll be able to buy these for a song as a nice bedside Chromebook alternative. Got it.

Just another lesson to NEVER PREORDER.

 

[AnotherReader]

Well, they didn't post cache latencies.

Qualcomm has provided some latencies in their presentation which are much higher than these:

• 17 cycles for L2 hit (probably includes L1 miss)
• Latency to DRAM: 102-104 ns

 

[Evrsr]

Like some reviews before, this day 1 review on Notebook Check is fishy.

Dave2D posted numbers that are very good, even on the GPU front. Not Meteor Lake good on the GPU but still, quite good.