We've heard about how fast the Snapdragon X Elite is, and now we're starting to see how fast it is. In fact, it's so fast, the M3 MacBook Air is gathering dust.

According to internal tests conducted by Tom's Guide, the X Elite was 28% faster than the Apple M3 chip when running in Geekbench 6.2. This test is a test of CPU peak performance based on a geometric average of multiple runs, using Qualcomm's laptop reference design.

What is interesting about this silicon story is that when Qualcomm announced its new generation of Arm chips for laptops, Apple went ahead and introduced the M3 MacBook Pro, which consequently stole the company's thunder.

The X Elite is likely to steal it back, as internal testing has shown that the chip is faster. Qualcomm has not said anything about battery life, but I believe that is because the X Elite may not reach the stamina levels of Apple's M-series chips.

However, given what we are seeing compared to Intel machines, this is a big step in the right direction to fuel the battery.

Besides, we tested the Snapdragon X Elite on several benchmarks. Most fascinatingly, we think Qualcomm is being a bit modest here, given the fact that not only does it beat the M3 in multi-core results, but also the M3 Pro MacBook Pro. [It's not just Apple's lower- and mid-tier chips, but also Intel's most powerful Core Ultra chipset, the 9 185H, because it's supposed to be more powerful than the 9 185H. If you are a Blender fan, you might want to take a look at these results.

However, two tests caught me off guard. First, using OBS for game streaming presents a significant obstacle with respect to accessibility; Whisper is a fascinating add-on that does live captioning. This is all done via AI transcription and is fully processed by the NPU.

Now, when you normally do this, one important thing you will notice with Intel and AMD based machines is that the fans will gradually start to kick up due to the somewhat intense demands on the processors being made from OBS. In the case of the X Elite, however, there was very little heat demand while I was using it, and the speed of subtitling was impressive with the paltry amount of wattage this app consumes.

And finally, there is the Windows app emulation layer. Microsoft seems confident in Qualcomm's potential, claiming it is faster than Rosetta 2. You see, after seeing Baldur'sGate3 go through the emulation layer and hit 40 FPS, I'm starting to think Redmond might be right.

My own testing averaged 32 FPS and Wild Life Extreme's result was 6,155. While the graphics prowess isn't worlds to set the world on fire when compared to discrete GPU equivalents, this is a very impressive score considering it is an integrated system.

Yes, the plastic of the reference unit just above the keyboard did get warm, and the fans worked hard to let it out during gaming. Of course, this is only a reference-design laptop, so other consumer systems may be better (or worse).

But having tested the Snapdragon X Elite in person for the first time, I have a sneaking feeling that Intel, AMD, and even Apple should watch their backs; Snapdragon is fighting a hot battle for multi-threaded performance, and the X Elite is a great example of that.