Apple M3 Max 14-Core vs Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100

Apple M3 Max 14-Core

The Apple M3 Max 14 core CPU is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was introduced towards the end of 2023. It integrates a new 14-core CPU with 10 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 4 efficiency cores with 2.8 GHz. There is also a more powerful 16-core variant with 40 GPU cores.

Thanks to the higher clock rates and architectural improvements, the processor performance is also significantly better than the M2 Max in benchmarks and can keep up with the fastest mobile CPUs.

The M3 also integrates a new graphics card with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration via hardware. In the cheaper model, 30 of the chip's 40 cores are used and support up to 5 displays simultaneously (internal and 4 external).

GPU and CPU can jointly access the shared memory on the package (unified memory). This is available in 36 and 96 GB variants and offers 400 GB/s maximum bandwidth (512 bit bus).

The integrated 16-core Neural Engine has also been revised and now offers 18 TOPS peak performance (compared to 15.8 TOPS in the M2 but 35 TOPS in the new A17 Pro). The video engine now also supports AV1 decoding in hardware. H.264, HEVC and ProRes (RAW) can still be decoded and encoded. Like its predecessor, the Max chip offers two video engines and can therefore encode and decode two streams simultaneously.

Unfortunately, the integrated WLAN only continues to support WiFi 6E (no WiFi 7), unlike the small M3 SoC thunderbolt 4 is also supported (max 40 Gbit/s).

The chip is manufactured in the current 3nm process (N3B) at TSMC and contains 92 billion transistors (+37% vs. Apple M2 Max).

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100

The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 is a pretty fast ARM architecture processor (SoC) for use in Windows laptops. The X1E-80-100 is the second-fastest member of the Snapdragon X series, as of May 2024; as such, it has 12 Oryon CPU cores (3 clusters of equally powerful cores; 12 threads) running at up to 4.0 GHz, the 3.8 TFLOPS Adreno X1-85 GPU, the 45 TOPS Hexagon NPU and an impressively fast LPDDR5x-8448 memory controller.

The faster Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 is thought to be based on the same die with the same NPU and the same number of CPU cores but with a higher GPU and CPU clock speeds.

Architecture and Features

Qualcomm Oryon cores are in part based on Nuvia IP; they most likely make use of the ARM v8.7 microarchitecture. Much like modern AMD and Intel processors, the Snapdragon chip is compatible with USB 4 and thus with Thunderbolt 4 but it remains to be seen if it is is compatible with GeForce or Radeon discrete graphics cards.

The Qualcomm SoC is thought to have at least 12 PCIe 4 and 4 PCIe 3 lanes for connecting various kinds of devices. NVMe SSDs are supported with a throughput of up to 7.9 GB/s; furthermore, most laptops built around the chip are expected to have 16 GB of LPDDR5X-8448 RAM. There is also a 45 TOPS NPU for accelerating AI workloads.

Performance

When all of the 12 cores are under load, they can run at up to 3.4 GHz. The much more desirable 4.0 GHz clock speed is only achievable under single-thread or dual-thread loads.

Given the very similar clock speeds, its multi-thread benchmark scores should be about the same as that of the X1E-78-100 for Ryzen 7 7840U and Apple M3-like performance in most real-world tasks. We'll make sure to update this section once we get our hands on a system powered by the X1E-80-100.

Like any other Windows on ARM platform, the Snapdragon X chip works best with applications and games compiled specifically for ARM processors. If making use of the built-in x86 to ARM emulation mode, a performance penalty of about 20% is to be expected.

Graphics

The integrated 3.8 TFLOPS Adreno X1-85 GPU is DirectX 12-enabled but not DirectX 12 Ultimate-enabled, despite featuring VRS and ray tracing support. The 3.8 TFLOPS of performance that it delivers pale in comparison to the slowest current-generation professional Nvidia Ada graphics card for laptops, the RTX 500 Ada, that delivers up to 9.2 TFLOPS.

Its gaming performance is somewhat underwhelming. While slightly faster than the aging Iris Xe (96 EUs), the Adreno is not fast enough to outpace the Radeon 780M meaning there is little point in comparing it with full-fat discrete graphics cards. Baldur's Gate 3, a triple-A title released in 2023, is pretty much unplayable at 1080p / Low. GTA V, a game that saw the light of day in 2015, is playable at 1080p / High.

The Qualcomm iGPU will let you use up to 3 UHD 2160p monitors simultaneously. 2160p120 integrated displays are supported, as are the popular AV1, HEVC and AVC video codecs (both decoding and encoding). The hardware does not support the VVC codec; that feature remains a Lunar Lake exclusive for now.

Power consumption

The X1E-80-100 is most likely going to be less power-hungry than its more powerful brother (the latter can be set to consume up to 80 Watts). Expect to see anything between 20 W and 45 W under long-term workloads because that's what Ryzen HS chips normally consume.

The SoC is built with a 4 nm TSMC process for decent, as of H1 2024, energy efficiency.