Snapdragon X Elite hits Geekbench, beats Apple’s M3 chip in multi-core test

The Snapdragon X Elite — Qualcomm’s flagship PC chip expected to arrive in laptops from popular brands this year — has been spotted in a benchmark test. A listing for the alleged Surface Laptop 6 on Geekbench suggests that Microsoft’s upcoming Surface Laptop could beat Apple’s MacBook Pro models, which are powered by its latest M3 chip, in a single CPU benchmark. According to recent reports, Microsoft may launch Surface laptops equipped with Snapdragon X Elite chips at a hardware event in May.

The Surface Laptop 6 was noticed by WCCFTech on Geekbench, no official product name. It is listed with the title “OEMBR OEMBR Product Name MFG” and the details show that it is powered by a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chipset clocked at 4.01 GHz, with 12 cores. It is worth noting that there is three Snapdragon X Elite variantsand the one tested wasn’t the most powerful chip — this variant (XIE-84-100) boasts a 4.20 GHz boost clock.

Photo credit: Screenshot/ Geekbench

The alleged Surface Laptop 6 with a Snapdragon X Elite chip has a single-core score of 2,714 points and a multi-core score of 14,078 points. That puts the chip ahead of Apple’s 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro in Geekbench’s multi-core tests — the M3 MacBook Pro scored 3,103 and 12,065 respectively.

If these benchmarks are real, then Apple’s M3 chip should be 13.37 percent faster than the Snapdragon X Elite on the rumored Surface Laptop 6. Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s chip is shown to be 15.4 percent faster than the M3 MacBook Pro. After all, the Snapdragon processor has more cores (12) than Apple’s M3 chip (8).

It’s worth taking these figures with a grain of salt, as Microsoft has yet to announce any plans to release new Surface models with Snapdragon laptop chips. According to a recent report, it is said that Microsoft is confident that the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 can beat the latest 3nm Apple Silicon processor. We can expect to learn more about these devices soon, with Microsoft rumored to unveil new Surface Laptops powered by Snapdragon chips at its next hardware event in May.