The future is here, folks! Or will be, come late next year. And that is because Qualcomm has today announced the Snapdragon 8cx, its third chipset for Windows 10.
Made official at the Snapdragon Technology Summit, Qualcomm has built this chipset from the ground up for PCs — unlike its previous two efforts before it the Snapdragon 835 and 850, which were derived from a mobile SoC.
So, what about performance, which is the about the only thing that matters?
Well, if we go by what the chip giant is claiming, performance should be on par with an Intel Core i5, mobile variant thereof. And not the low power 5W pieces either, but the 15W mobile CPUs that pack the appropriate amount of punch.
And this should be encouraging news, as probably the only major thing that has kept Windows on ARM platform away from making headlines is the fact that there were terribly lacking when it comes to computing prowess.
Hopefully, that is now a thing of the past.
This is the fastest Kryo CPU that Qualcomm has ever built, thanks to eight Kryo 495 cores built on a 7nm architecture. A larger 10MB cache should ensure for faster multitasking too.
Same is true for graphics, where Qualcomm once again impresses with its most powerful GPU ever.
The Adreno 680 GPU is apparently twice as fast as the Adreno 630 on the Snapdragon 850, while being some 60% more power efficient. And if you compare it to the Adreno 540 on the Snapdragon 835, it is also 3.5 times as fast.
This should serve well for its gaming chops, as well as multimedia applications that demand raw power.
Connectivity is another hallmark of the Windows 10 on ARM platform, and this new chip doesn’t disappoint there either. The new Snapdragon X24 4G LTE modem is good enough for download speeds of up to 2Gbps and upload speeds of 316Mbps.
Guaranteeing lightning fast networking, where available.
Nice to see Qualcomm not skimping on factors like cellular connectivity, as along with much longer battery life and instant wakeup, it is one of the key value propositions of the Windows 10 on ARM.
And now for some bad news.
Unfortunately, you will not be able to get your hands on a Snapdragon 8cx device just yet — PCs with this new Compute Platform are only expected to ship in the third quarter of 2019.
