Apple has been doing a great job with its Apple Silicon “M” chips for computers, as they deliver more performance without consuming too much power. On the other side, Qualcomm and Microsoft have been trying to develop a competitor to the Apple Silicon Macs. While the first attempts were unsuccessful, it seems that Qualcomm’s latest CPU has finally beaten Apple’s M1 and is catching up with M2 in terms of performance.
Qualcomm’s new CPU is almost as fast as M2
As reported by Windows Latest, benchmark results for Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 chip, internally known as “Hamoa,” have surfaced on Geekbech. Interestingly, while previous versions of Qualcomm’s ARM chips failed to beat Apple’s M1, this one finally did.
The Geekbench test results for Qualcomm’s new CPU reveal a single-core score of 1197 and a multi-core score 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. However, because the new Snapdragon chip has more cores, it was able to beat the M1’s multi-core performance and came very close to the M2’s performance.
| 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 founded in 2019 by former engineers from the Apple Silicon team and which was 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 aren’t everything
Top comment by Veso
Beating the base M1, only at multicore, using more cores, and more power. What about M1 Pro/ M1 Max? Also M1 is 2-3 years old now. By the time this chip comes out, M3 will be out. So they’re still years behind…
Of course, raw performance numbers aren’t everything, and there are a few other things to consider. For example, because Qualcomm’s chip has more cores, it may not be as energy-efficient as Apple’s chips. In other words, while it may achieve higher performance, it may also end up draining more energy – which is not good for laptops and tablets.
Another thing to keep in mind is that while M2 has been available since 2022, Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 is still under development. The first Windows PCs powered by Qualcomm’s new chip are expected to be available on the market by the end of the year or early 2024.
In the meantime, Apple has been getting ready to announce the first Macs with the M3 chip, which are also expected to be introduced in the next few months. And since M3 will certainly bring another performance boost to Apple Silicon Macs, Qualcomm will be busy trying to beat Apple’s chips for longer.
Still, it’s good to see that other companies are also investing in ARM-based PCs. The one that has to be worried about this situation is Intel, which has already lost Apple and could soon lose other PC vendors.
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