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日本Apple M4 vs Snapdragon X Elite – The Next-Gen CPU Battle
Apple shocked everyone with its M1 CPU nearly four years ago, and since then they haven’t stopped. We’ve now got the M4 (not a BMW) and Apple has made it around 20% faster than the M3, which is absolutely insane to see. With all the success that they’ve been reaping, every other manufacturer under the sun is thinking “Why can’t we have what they’re having?”.
Qualcomm seems to have been the fastest thinker out of them all, revealing the new Snapdragon X series. The first addition is the X Elite, announced in October 2023. Then, not even a month ago, they told the world about the X Plus, a slightly cut-down version. However, it’s still super early to talk about it, so we’ll stick to the X Elite.
Manufacturers have been watering at the mouth at the thought of laptops as efficient and as powerful as Apple’s MacBooks for a while, and now that we can get specialized ARM-based SoCs made with running Windows in mind, we’re starting to get these devices pop up in leaks and other “secretive announcements”.
We’ve found some really interesting results online, so with the recent reveal of the M4 SoC, it only feels right to compare the new M4 against the Snapdragon X Elite, in a clash that’s sure to shape the future of laptop CPUs as far as portable machines are concerned.
Specs table
The X Elite brings 12 Oryon cores, which aren’t divided into P-cores and E-cores. This is 2 more cores than the M4 so we might get an overall better Multi-thread score.
| CPU | CPU Cores | GPU Cores | Memory Bandwidth | Memory Capacity | Process Technology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple M4 (10-core CPU) | 4 performance cores + 6 efficiency cores | 10 cores | 120 GB/s | TBD | 3 nm |
| Snapdragon X Elite | 12 cores | Adreno 750 | 135 GB/s | up to 64GB | 4 nm |
Benchmarks
CPU benchmarks
It turns out the CPU cores inside the M4 are a lot more powerful on their own when compared to the ones inside the X Elite chip. The Geekbench 6 Single-core scores sway way in favor of the M4, with a 58% lead. However, when all 12 cores of the X Elite are fired up and put against the 10 cores of the M4, the M4 is only 3% quicker. The X Elite might turn out to be quite good for a first-gen product, offering very good multi-core performance that’s very important for video editing, rendering, math computing, and more.
| CPU | Geekbench 6 Single / Multi Score |
|---|---|
| Apple M4 | 3810 (+58%) / 14677 (+3%) |
| Snapdragon X Elite | 2409 / 14298 |
GPU benchmarks
So far we’ve only got Metal results for the Apple M4’s GPU, along with Vulcan score for the Snapdragon X Elite. Metal is Apple’s 3D Graphics API, so it is proprietary. On the other hand, Vulkan is open-sourced, so companies can take the source code and tweak it however they want. As soon as we get our hands on these chips, we’ll test them ourselves thoroughly and give you a proper performance assessment.
| CPU | Geekbench 6 GPU test |
|---|---|
| Apple M4 – Metal score | 53792 |
| Snapdragon X Elite – Vulkan score | 23649 |
While both the M4 and the X Elite chips are unavailable, you can check other great CPUs that power thin & light laptops.
