Are the factory test results of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series misleading? – According to some OEMs, they cannot be reproduced – iPon

Last year, Qualcomm presented the SoC unit named Snapdragon X Elite, of which a total of three versions have been released so far. As the company previously promised, on April 24, 2024, a new member of the Snapdragon X series, a Snapdragon X Plus series SoC, was released, which we wrote about in more detail in this news. Based on the rumors, there will be 4 models each in the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus families, but not all of them have been presented yet, nor have the company officials talked about the details of the architecture, but the situation will definitely change , as the planned start date, promised for the middle of the year, is getting closer.

However, we have received manufacturer test results, quite a lot and various ones, based on which it seemed until now that the star of the Windows on ARM platform could finally shine with the members of the Snapdragon X series. According to the results provided by the manufacturer, the Snapdragon X Elite is considered capable of beating the current solutions of both AMD, Intel and Apple, but in the past few days, referring to industry information, news has arrived that these test results are not really reproducible. If this is true, it would be a huge problem, since Qualcomm would essentially be misleading the industry, the media, and the users themselves. Well, let’s not rush ahead so much, let’s first see what can be known on the subject at the time of writing our news.

Serious accusations have been made

Citing industry information, SemiAccurate.com employees claim that the results published by Qualcomm are carefully selected test results, practically only these were served to media representatives and, through them, to users. Based on the information, two large OEM partners, as well as an informant with insight into Qualcomm’s innermost recesses, claim that the results reported by Qualcomm are misleading, and can essentially be perceived as fraud, because even the leading OEM developers have not been able to reproduce them, and the difference is not a few percent.

For the first time last year, at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit conference, official test results revealed the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite. Those tests were not yet made with the final software, so a picture of lower performance than the castle was outlined. With those results, it was an absolute mystery, with what settings they were made, and there was really no way to check them.

Not long after, the OEM partners also received the Snapdragon X series SoC units, so they could start testing them, but the result was far from what was expected. The results published by Qualcomm did not even come close, the OEM partners managed to achieve barely 50% of the performance suggested by the original numbers. When Qualcomm engineers saw the results, they blamed the non-optimization of the Windows on ARM platform and insufficient cooling. As the cooling improved, the results also got slightly better, but still didn’t come close to Qualcomm’s numbers. According to an anonymous informant, the Snapdragon X Elite is essentially comparable in performance to Intel’s Celeron series.

There was no mention of how Qualcomm’s experts could have cheated during the tests, but according to them, based on the fact that no first-line OEM partner can even come close to Qualcomm’s test results, it can only be a matter of misleading information and a carefully designed test environment.

When the Snapdragon X Elite SoC unit was announced, Qualcomm officials refused to answer any technical questions about the new features, but promised to provide in-depth technical information later before the chips launch. They also offered that testers would be able to make independent measurements of the products. So far, unfortunately, none of the promises have been fulfilled, but it is worth adding that there is still time for the right promised by the middle of the year, the company’s officials can smooth out the problem. By the way, the members of the press were able to test the products equipped with the SoC units in question during the individual events, although the test programs were run on them under closely controlled conditions, pre-set and pre-installed.

It is also negative that when the Snapdragon X Plus SoC series was announced, no more in-depth technical information was given regarding the structure of the SoC, but quite a lot of details were revealed, performance data was also received, but details related to the architecture were unfortunately avoided this time as well.

If the above accusations are well-founded, it will be a huge problem for the Windows on ARM platform, because the goal until now has been to provide a viable alternative to Apple’s M series SoC units, as well as Intel and AMD’s x86-64-based solutions, but if the performance in reality is really far from what Qualcomm promised, then the Windows on ARM platform still cannot achieve major successes.

Microsoft will make important announcements at the Build developer conference in May, hopefully innovations related to the Windows on ARM platform will also be discussed, including the real performance of Qualcomm Snapdragon X SoC units.

Qualcomm responded to the allegations

In an answer to the Tom’s Hardware staff, the company official said that they continue to fully support the performance data they have announced and are excited to finally present the configurations based around the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus to users – the not so distant in the future.