Snapdragon X Plus 8-Core Chipset for More Affordable Copilot+ PCs Announced Ahead of IFA 2024

Qualcomm on Wednesday announced the launch of the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core CPU, ahead of the upcoming IFA 2024 event in Berlin. The new Snapdragon chipset is a more affordable variant of the company's 10-core Arm-based laptop processors launched earlier this year, and it is built on the same 4nm process technology. The chipset is also equipped with the same Oryon CPU cores as the company's other X series processors, and it supports on-device artificial intelligence (AI) applications and features.

Snapdragon X Plus 8-Core Features

The octa-core Snapdragon X Plus chipset is equipped with eight of Qualcomm's Oryon CPU cores with 30MB CPU cache — 12MB less than the more expensive X Plus chips — along with support for up to 64GB of LPDDR5X RAM. The X1P-42-100 variant has a peak clock speed of 3.2GHz and a 1.7 TFLOPS Adreno GPU, while the X1P-46-100 chip has a slightly higher clock speed of 3.4GHz with a faster 2.1 TFLOPS GPU.

The Adreno GPU on the newly announced Snapdragon X Plus 8-core processors supports up to three external displays at 4K resolution with a 60Hz refresh rate. Meanwhile, the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU is capable of 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS) for on-device AI features on compatible applications. 

Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core chip will support PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD or UFS 4.0 storage. Devices equipped with the processor will also be able to support up to 36-megapixel cameras with support for 4K HDR video capture via the company's Spectra ISP. 

The Snapdragon X Plus 8-core chipset
Photo Credit: Qualcomm

The Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF system on the processor enables support for mmWave and Sub-6GHz 5G networks with up to 10Gbps download speeds. The Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 mobile connectivity system brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support. Computers equipped with the chipset can also be equipped with up to three USB 4.0 ports. 

Qualcomm also claims that the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core chipset is capable of delivering up to twice the amount of battery life than its closest rival — the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U processor. It's currently unclear how the chip fares against Apple's power efficient M2 chip.

Snapdragon X Plus 8-Core Availability

Computers powered by the new Snapdragon X Plus 8-core chipset will be available starting today, from OEMs including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung. Ahead of IFA 2024, Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon said that pricing for these laptops will start at $799 (roughly Rs. 67,100).