Qualcomm introduces Snapdragon X chip for $600 PCs

The first PCs to ship with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus And Snapdragon X Elite there were chips premium laptops with starting prices of $1,000 and up.. A few months later, Qualcomm introduces cheaper Snapdragon X chip for PC from $700.

Now Qualcomm is expanding its processor lineup with a new chip designed for PCs, the Copilot+, which starts at $600. New Snapdragon X (X1-26-100) The processor features 8 Oryon processor cores with support for frequencies up to 3 GHz, a 1.7 teraflops GPU and a 45 TOPS NPU.

In many ways, the new chip is essentially what you would get if you took the Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-42-100), lowered the maximum processor frequency from 3.2 GHz to 3 GHz, and replaced the dual ISP with one ISP (meaning that instead of supporting up to two 36MP cameras, the new chip can only support one 36MP camera).

In terms of performance, it may be Qualcomm’s cheapest current-gen PC chip, but the company claims it performs about 1.6 times faster than the Intel Core 5 120U processor in single-core and multi-core tests. And it does this while consuming less energy.

The GPU and AI performance are said to be even more favorable, as is the battery life. But keep in mind that Qualcomm has likely carefully selected some benchmarks that show its chip in the best light. And, perhaps more importantly, Qualcomm is comparing the Snapdragon X processor to a mid-range chip based on Intel’s older Raptor Lake architecture, rather than a new chip based on the Meteor Lake or Lunar Lake architecture.

But this is not a funny comparison when it comes to a processor designed for budget and mid-range PCs.

Qualcomm says we can expect PCs with the new processor to arrive early this year, including models from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo.