Transcription
Apple's M5 MacBook Pro is finally here, with faster performance, especially for the graphics. But I've been looking at how it compares to the M4 and previous Apple chips, and I've realized something that I honestly didn't think would happen, at least not this quickly.
To my surprise, it seems like Qualcomm's newly announced Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip is somehow actually faster than Apple's new M5 chip. And not only in terms of multi-core CPU performance, which I thought makes total sense since we now have 18 CPU cores on the X2 Elite, but upon further inspection and some number crunching, I've just realized that the X2 Elite X is now also faster in terms of the graphics. The area where the M5 gained the most. That is seriously unexpected, especially seeing as this is only Qualcomm's second generation X Elite chip.
Now, before I dig into all of the performance details with various charts showing you guys how the M5 stacks up against the X2 Elite, I do want to mention that these numbers are with Qualcomm's reference designs, as we witnessed at Snapdragon Summit last month where Qualcomm invited us to check them out in person, which was an awesome experience all around. But as you probably already know, we mostly cover Apple products on this channel, which makes it a bit hard to admit that Snapdragon has just caught up and surpassed the brand new M5. But let me shut up and just get into the numbers. Let them do the talking, because I honestly think you're going to be very impressed.
As for the new X2 Elite Extreme, we have the third gen Orion core, which is on 3 nanometer. Somehow they've gotten the clocks up to 5.0 gigahertz dual boost, which is super fast, while the new M5 only goes up to 4.61, which is still also fast, but not as fast as the X2 Elite. However, the M5 is still turning out a win in terms of the single core score in Geekbench, reaching as high as 4,300 in leaked benchmarks, which is insane. It's the fastest in the world. But still, the X2 Elite X is still pretty impressive. I mean, it surpassed 4,000 points. That is crazy fast. Essentially beating the entire M4 series of chips, which I honestly did not think would be possible. This is a massive gain coming from the previous X Elite.
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Now moving on to multicore. This is where it got crazy, crazy impressive for this chip right here. Out of nowhere, the X Elite chip came from being slower than the M4 all the way to outright destroying it with the X2 Elite X. Now, the new M5 got a massive boost, being 21% faster than the M4 with the same 10 core CPU layout, making it basically as fast as the M1 Ultra Max Studio, which is crazy with an 18,000 multicore score. But that was still not enough to beat the new X2 Elite Extreme, which is still a massive 29% faster than the new M5, which is just insane. Which means that the regular version of the X2 Elite will definitely still be faster, and it'll still be faster in a non-reference regular laptop. I mean, it's just so much faster that the M5 doesn't even stand a chance. The X2 Elite X is apparently even faster than the 14 core version of the M4 Max, which is just crazy. I mean, when we were at Snapdragon Summit and they started showing off how they outperformed the M4 Pro, I was in disbelief because it doesn't seem like it should be possible since the M4 Pro exceeded our expectations for multi-core performance when it came out. It like literally destroyed every other x86 desktop chip that you can find. So to see this performance on the X2 Elite X is crazy. I mean, Qualcomm just comes out of nowhere with their second generation chip and it does this. Bravo Qualcomm. This is absolutely so impressive that you pulled this off. And to think that yes, this is on a 3 nanometer chip architecture, just like the M4 and the M5. And it keeps making me think, what if Qualcomm's third generation X3 Elite Extreme on 2 nanometer starts to not only keep up with Apple's high-end Mac chips? But what if it surpasses them? I mean, everyone knows Apple's been kind of slowing down recently, and they're basically starting to lose out their lead on the mobile front. I mean, the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is starting to beat out the A19 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro. I feel like we're in a totally different timeline right now because Qualcomm has played their cards very carefully and masterfully in terms of their marketing strategy, while their engineers are sitting back at home base killing it with these improvements.
But wait, it doesn't stop there, because we have to talk about graphics. The area which the original X Elite struggled the most compared to the M4. I mean, we tested 3D Mark Steel Nomad Light, and the X Elite only got 171.5 FPS, while the M4 got 30, making it 71% faster. So, I came into the X2 Elite Extreme announcement thinking there's no way that Qualcomm is going to be able to catch up, right? Well, turns out I was wrong. The X2 Elite X is somehow 2.4343 times faster than the original X Elite in Steel Nomad Light, giving us around 42.5 FPS, completely destroying Apple's M4 chip. And if we do the math on the M5, which seems to be scoring around 35% faster than the M4 in terms of Geekbench 6, which correlates very well compared to Steel Nomad Light, it looks like we get around 40.5 FPS on the M5, which means that yes, the X2 Elite Extreme is actually faster. Holy moly, that was completely unexpected.
Now, of course, the real challenge is for Qualcomm to catch up to both the M4 Pro and M4 Max in terms of graphics, because those are much faster, let alone the M5 versions that are coming out early next year. Those will be even faster. But if Qualcomm can get their X2 Elite Extreme chip into reasonably priced Windows laptops around, let's say $1,600 to $2,000, I think we have some very serious competition on our hands. I mean, at Snapdragon Summit, we tested the new ARM version of Fortnite, which is now fully optimized with easy anti-cheat support finally, and it was really, really nice. We had a nice and smooth 60 FPS with minimal frame drops. It worked very well. So, it's looking like the future of ARM computers and laptops is very promising. And it looks like Qualcomm is the biggest benefactor with them just pushing and pushing for higher performance.
So, with that said, let me know your thoughts down in the comments section below. And if you enjoy this video, subscribe above for more videos like this one. And check out the M5 iPad Pro details right over there. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next one.