Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite - looks like the Windows world’s answer to Apple Silicon
- Thread starter gourav
- Start date
alekhkhanna
Herald
From what i've read, All native x86 apps will work from day 1 using Windows x86 emulation. Apple did it very well with Rosetta. I just hope MS engineers are capable enough to do something similar.
Also, There are a bunch of videos of Control, Redout running on these chips in youtube in x86 emulated mode.
Also from the below article, the x86 instructions are translated for the first time and cached. post which it runs in ARM64EC mode which delivers near native performance.
Qualcomm Says Windows Games Will Just Work on Snapdragon X Elite
Qualcomm is confident that PC games would run seamlessly on Snapdragon X Elite using the ARM64EC and x64 emulation layer.beebom.com
Really hope that's the case. As much as i like iPhones and ipads, not a fan of MacOS. If windows offers similar battery life and snappy performance as Mac Pros in relatively similar chassis - game changer!
look into intel core ultra series, doesnt give as much battery life as a Mac but still a solid 9-10 hours from the reviews and has support for games too in a lightweight (again not as thin as a mac) chassis
EDIT: Asus's Zenbook (picked from Dave2D's vid)
alekhkhanna
Herald
Not spending money on x86 anymore. Will wait a year or so for Win on ARM to mature and take the leap.
KAKAN
Explorer
I wonder about that. Ubuntu partnership was specififically about embedded chips, not these. I really do hope that Qualcomm decides to support their chips on Mainline linux. That would be amazing. I use Fedora on my laptop, and would gladly switch to an ARM based one for the battery life alone. My laptop does last for like 8h now, so I have high hopes for the next laptop I buy!
Meanwhile, older ARM laptops are starting to get "full support", which is also really good news: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Acer-Aspire-One-Linux-6.10-EC
Ikr! I almost want to buy one too, given that they actually support linux and reach their claimed battery life. I don't want the Mac-like performance, frankly. No need for it. I want to watch movies, type in email, edit some documents, do some dev. work, if possible and so on. No need for crazy GPU or performance, but a fanless device with great battery life. That would be so freaking cool!
Yes, people can argue that you can do almost all of that on a phone/tablet, but the screen real estate is what's important to me, along with a good OS/DE, keyboard and mouse support, or atleast a trackpad. Maybe if Termux was better integrated with the UI and MiX had cleaner integration with SFTP/SSH keys, I might consider having just a Samsung Android tablet too? Removing iPads from the equation, S6 Lite is kind of cheap for how well it works, I think. Pair it with a really good case and keyboard, and it comes close, just that Android holds it back.
I would still buy it even if they price it at par with the macs simply because it has none of Apple's bullshit attached with it,
CeyeN
Discoverer
This user already shared this video. so it looks like linux is natively supported.
Linux on this chip
8h is really good. I have a Lenovo yoga 7I which has a massive 75Whr battery, but it still only lasts like 6 hours. For comparison’s sake, how long did you laptop last when running windows?
KAKAN
Explorer
The laptop lasted around 6hr average on Windows with Battery Saver mostly on (so lower brightness).
8hr figure on Fedora is running youtube, or watching movies with earphones or doing basic document editing without much else running in background (maybe music or ssh, but those shouldn't affect battery life much), on 50% brightness or above. My model is Ideapad Flex 5, 2021ish. I think part of the reason it lasts so long is because of the then-new AMD arch that didn't use as much power for most tasks? I love it, it certainly lasts a lot longer than my brother's HP Probook with a dGPU, or laptops older than 2015
superczar
Juggernaut
To be fair, hardware upgrade constraints aside, there is no additional BS with macs.
One could also argue that there are several thin & lights (non apple) that have the same issue (non upgradeable ram/ soldered ssd etc) although given the wider diversity, one would be able to find alternates that do have an available slot or two - which one obviously can’t with Mac.
Having said that, I have burnt way too much money on non apple x64 thin & lights over the past many years and have finally given up on it because of three reasons:
- x64 - and the unmanageable heat & battery woes esp on a small form factor chassis
- The random backward compatible crud that has built up over the decades in windows that tends to make systems act up for no rhyme/ reason at times or often (sleep/wake woes, sudden slowdowns (not frequent but still) to name a few)
- The above coupled with the lack of ability to backward trace an issue when it occurs ..
since this usually involves random regedit voodoo that no one truly seems to understand - thus the only option being to try out random posts from the interwebs.. and hope & pray it will resolve whatever issue caused you to look for these random solutions in the first place.
(Contrary to popular opinion, Mac (and linux) have a logically structured middleware so tracing difficult issues and doing a RCA / resolution is a lot more straightforward.. and no , it isn’t locked down like mobile OSes (ios or android)
All of the above make me quite excited about the possibility of seeing a clean , crud free native ARM variant of windows thats built ground-up without the legacy rooted chains that currently bog down win x64
This coupled with the overall much nicer experience I have had with ARM on desktop make me hopeful that this is exactly what Windows/MS need.
AM i being too optimistic? Maybe.
Will I take an early plunge? Burnt my hands too many times to do that
But i do seriously hope this results in better windows machine so that even if it its 3-4 years later, my next machine can be a Win-Arm system
its not even that for me, its their bullshit pricing for minor incremental upgrades, their anti-repair stance and I can keep going on but I have ranted enough on this topic here and pissed of quite a few members too in the process XD but coming back to your point, its gotten better in recent times, most OEMs do leave either an empty ram slot or price their upgrades atleast semi-reasonably unlike Apple.
Honestly? the laptop form factor aint built for longevity, specially the thin and light form factor which exacerbates issues like heating, dust clogging up etc and yeah windows issues are mostly because of Microsoft being Microsoft and the backwards compatibility that they have to support unlike Apple which just dropped it with Arm, but if you get in the habit of analysing Memory Dumps, most windows issues are pretty diagonalizable, unless you meant microsoft shoving their bullshit down our throats, at which point a debloated windows is your best but yeah Linux rocks for debugging issues, their logging is so verbose and easy to follow through.
You are echoing my thoughts perfectly, though I wont hold my breath for Microsoft stopping being Microsoft and actually cleaning up their shit, but I do hope that Snapdragon's promises pan out because I am sick of Apple being the only choice for most peeps.
superczar
Juggernaut
Despite all the negatives around limited upgradeability/ high price for upgrades - To give credit where its due, apple hardware does last longer in general with minimal hiccups.
I wont go into the details - but let me just say that for the last 15+ years, I have always kept two (or more) personal laptops (don’t ask why.. I like having toys despite my age :lol: )
1 has always been a Mac and another a PC .. The number of Win laptops I cycled through is far greater even though i generally tend to use the mac more.
The question to ponder upon is that whether Is it possible that Apple buyers are not necessarily tech illiterate or do not know better?
Maybe (at least for them), the TCO of buying apple ends up being cheaper ?
As for analyzing memory dumps, my tech literacy doesnt go that far - but I wasnt really referring to BSODs or serious crashes .. they are pretty rare on Windows (and most OSes ) now
I was referring more to random annoyances - like wifi refusing to connect after a resume / laptop going into “I must burn this bag“ mode when you close the lid in a hurry and shove it in your bag.
And when you are left with no option but to do a restart for this non reason, the system will start updating when what you desperately needed was a quick turnaround
None of these are serious enough for someone to start looking for an outright platform change - but when you don’t see these things happen on the other side of the fence (at least rarely, if not ever), you gradually end up shifting camps.
Now coming back to the topic, my hope from Windows ARM is simple. I do not care for extra new features and such.
I just want my things to be consistently boring and reliable now - and I am hoping that a fresh start / ground-up rebuild without having to add support for outdated APIs or core system
desiibond
Juggernaut
I purchased about 500$ worth MS and Qualcomm shares, going to put another 500$. I am using M2 Pro MacBook Pro and if MS gets it right with emulation, battery life is not even the best feature.
But then there are limitations for workhorses:
- Shutdown/Hibernate is history. I have Dell Wintel work laptop and MBP. If I put both to sleep at night, the battery drain is absolutely minimal for Mac and my wintel would have drained by then. Best part is that you do not have to think about Evo and all for this kind of battery life. Whichever laptop you buy, you are assured of brilliant battery life. Only difference is 'how fast it runs'.
- Peak performance is the same whether on battery or when connected to power. Current Wintel laptops (almost all of the models, definitely all models with dedicated GPU) cannot be pushed to its maximum potential when disconnected from power. ARM chip based laptops need not be throttled on battery. After all, M3 has TDP of 20W and M3 Max has TDP of 78W. This is with a 16 core CPU and 40 core GPU. With ARM design, we can have laptops with same level of performance on battery and on power.
- Blazing speeds : Any brand that goes with on-board memory and SSD is going to give blazing fast memory and SSD speeds. Given that brands like Dell had matched Apple in memory and SSD speed with current x86 limitations, they will make Apple's memory and SSD speeds look ancient. And if they can offer memory and SSD upgrades at a much lower cost, Apple will have no option to follow them.
- Much better cross platform applications: If will get easier for developers to write cross platform apps (a lot though depends on MS though).
- Drastically reduced size and weight of laptop. You wont even know that you have laptop in your backpack (not refering to MBP). Even the Zenbooks will feel heavy next to these that does not come with cooling fans etc.
But then there are limitations for workhorses:
- External display limitations.
- Ridiculously expensive to repair. You enter into the world of discard and buy new.
- You end up at the mercy of Qualcomm and Mediatek etc in the long run. Qualcomm is lot more greedy compared to AMD or Intel. They even make Nvidia look like saints. Not to forget Intel's contribution to PC standards. With companies like Qualcomm, you end up with lot of proprietary stuff for which all brands have to pay royalty to Qualcomm.
- If you are into productivity workload that needs Nvidia GPU (for example), you have to stay away from these. ML workloads on Macs are good but nowhere near to what we can run on Nvidia GPU based laptops.
- Copycat brands from China coming in and destroying the quality of laptops (like how they destroyed the mobile and TV industry quality/reliability) by offering ridiculously cheap laptops with short life.
- Lot of issues with emulation. Unless apps start building native ARM based versions, you will end up with performance issues. M1 Mac had lot of such issues even with Apple's tight control and limited application set. Apple's application and hardware size is like a lake and Windows's is like all oceans combined on Earth. Early adopters will face uphill battle. Buy if its just browsing etc, wait 2 years for productivity.
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TinTinSnowy
Guide
I don't agree with this point. I appreciate Chinese brands for greatly reducing inflation, which has led larger brands to provide more products at lower prices. The quality is excellent too. For instance, I still have a Xiaomi Mi3 in my drawer that provided flagship specifications at 15K, while my brother purchased an LG G2 with the same Snapdragon SOC for 45K.
My uncle spent a few lakhs on a Sony Bravia TV, which malfunctioned after a year. The repair costs from Sony were equivalent to 50% of the TV's purchase price. Following that experience, he purchased a 40K Xiaomi Android TV with the intention to replace it in a few years if it also malfunctions. Surprisingly, it's still running fine after 4 years.
KAKAN
Explorer
This is likely not going to happen. WoA will likely have backwards compatibility since that is what MS' is known for. And that is what corporate people need. It will not be a ground-up build at all, to the rest us, it'll likely be the same thing ported to another platform.
Okay, I'll nitpick a bit here, though I'll preface and say I'm not an expert on this, I just had a some curiosity after a couple of classes. It's not "x86" that runs hot, and it's neither "ARM design" that's more efficient. They are just targeting different niches. Intel and AMD both target the enterprise, where power simply doesn't matter as much. ARM has been targeting mobile devices from the start.
With the introduction of ARM Neoverse, ARM has started into the datacenter business too. Their chips will likely draw as much power as AMD EPYC ones (look at Ampere Ultra). On the same time, x86 cores can also be very power efficient, though I don't have any data to back this up. But nothing stops them theoritically from being so. But yeah, to the average person, ARM is the more "power per watt" option than x86/AMD64 ones.
- External display limitations is purely by design. It's not ARM's fault. They're bundled as a single SoC and not made to have multiple I/O by design. Something that goes against this logic is Ampere Ultra. And that's the nice thing about ARM. We have more choices, theortically.
- That can be changed, but there will be sacrifices. It's a tradeoff. SoCs with built-in memory will always have faster memory, but won't be upgradeable or repairable. Again, Ampere Ultra stands as an exception to this.
- This is true, I kinda hate how little standards there are in the ARM world. Since it was a mobile architecture, it made sense at the time I guess. I don't want this to be on PCs imo. But sadly, I'm just a niche consumer at the end. Intel and AMD, for what they are, they at least make and stand by their standards. I love that about current market.
I would say thats really subjective and anecdotal, case in point, me, we still have laptops functioning from 2010 and PCs my father built in 2003-2004 and I know a couple of my friends who ****ed up their laptops in 6 months, It all depends on how you take care of it. Macs specially from the flex gate era have been notorious with display issues, And its not even this, with today's macs, if your SSD decides to **** up, your laptop is nothing more than e-waste whereas with other OEMs its a simple matter of just swapping stuff out, and this is honestly what has kept our old shit going, we could just swap out parts as needed. Apple has really pushed forced obolescence whenever they can, be it their bullshit on an iPhone where you cant even get an aftermarket display because Apple said **** you or their bullshit with macs and soldering everything to the board.
Say no more I gotcha
From where I am coming from, if more peeps instead of just going along with Apple's or any other OEM's bullshit, just refused to outright buy their products, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. Apple gets away with it because people continue buying into their bullshit,
Yeah, I am firmly into the **** Microsoft club, but seriously if you are willing to put in time, look into debloated windows, that'll solve all these issues forced microsoft issues but yeah, its really aggravating but thankfully I havent really experienced many issues like this,As for analyzing memory dumps, my tech literacy doesnt go that far - but I wasnt really referring to BSODs or serious crashes .. they are pretty rare on Windows (and most OSes ) now
I was referring more to random annoyances - like wifi refusing to connect after a resume / laptop going into “I must burn this bag“ mode when you close the lid in a hurry and shove it in your bag.
And when you are left with no option but to do a restart for this non reason, the system will start updating when what you desperately needed was a quick turnaround
yep and I get it, and I would have been one of the biggest supporters of Macs if not for Apple, I have been using one for work for years now, and its a joy to work with but whenever I think about buying one, I see Apple and I get turned off.
This honestly aint gonna happen, atleast not with Windows, Microsoft gets their money from enterprise customers and backwards compatibility and enterprise goes hand-in-hand.
it's not the on-board memory, its the unified arch which has common memory for ram/gpu, its basically the same thing as a PS5 or Xbox and aside from gaming and maybe video editing. you wont feel a difference in daily usage. get any windows laptop with a decent processor and a ssd, you wont feel any difference in it unless you literally start measuring loading times with a stopwatch,
A good example of this is PS5 vs PC loading times for Sony ports, a PS55 has similar arch as the Mac with unified memory and most loading times compared against a decent PC, come within a couple of seconds if that and this is an extreme case where assets need to be loaded in/dumped within an extremely short period of time,
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superczar
Juggernaut
Question is - why should they if it fits the bill. A technology purchase decision is not rooted in ideology (And should not be)..
Every purchase I (or anyone) makes is a compromise in some way or the other.
And if paying an arguably higher apple tax for a relatively hassle free and a more consistent experience is what matters to a segment of users, they will continue to do so till Wintel (or hopefully WinArm) or another alternate offers a better expereince in this regard.
And TBH , the only person it affects is you.
I have no bone against MS or apple or any OEM for that matter.
The day I see a Windows based machine that offers the same or more (for my use case which is quite heavily loaded towards consistent behavior & performance)
And at a lower cost / Same cost for a better config, I will dump macbooks and gladly shift over to MS.
On a side note, FWIW, I also use both Android (Z4 , sp for reading) and iOS (as primary)
Android and ios are far more comparable on the consistency aspect than Mac and Windows and I really enjoy using the z4 - but sadly Androids comparable to teh equivalent iOS model end up costing same or more in most cases.
And i have a strong feeling that the same will be the scenario with Win-arm machines
This is what I am saying, how much more bullshit are you gonna take just because it's "better"? right now its onboard memory/SSD, with iPhones its apple and their proprietary charging cable/not allowing after market displays (heck, they dont even allow you to swap displays from a donor phone), how much more will it take for peeps to realize we are the one getting screwed in the end? This is how precedents are set, how market starts shovelling more bullshit down our throats. How HP gets away with selling proprietary ink and not allowing after market ink to be used in their printer, how you need a subscription to still use the ink they bought from HP and this is just one example. I can quote countless others. that's why I say its copium, just because it's "better" doesnt mean we should entertain the bullshit that OEMs force down our throats.
Nope, it affects us all, its just most peeps arent willing to acknowledge it and by the time they do, it's a precent and they can do **** all about it. we dont get shit taken away from us, we let OEMs take it away from us all the while screaming take my money, I want more of that!
you get what you pay for, its as simple as that. Why do you want comparable Android flagships or ARM laptops to be cheaper? The point is not about how expensive it is, its about how anti-consumer Apple's practices are. it depends on how much you want to stay in a walled garden, I prefer not being restricted so I'l; never buy an iPhone, other peeps may prefer the walled garden and iPhone is ideal for them. its that simple. You want premium support/updates? cough up the money for that.
animishticomb
Explorer
Yay awesome news....I got my gaming pc about a years back and now i think by 2027 it will be good time for me to upgrade