A new version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 has reportedly made significant improvements in a number of areas, contrary to the recent rumor that an earlier engineering sample of the chip had an extremely poor multi-core performance. Several iterations of the upcoming SoC are said to be being tested, and the CPU and GPU clock rates of the latest one have been revealed by a tipster, along with some performance data that suggests it is slightly faster than Apple’s M2.
Revegnus reports on Twitter that the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 only managed 1,300 in the single-core test, although Qualcomm’s single-core target is said to be 1,800. However, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 beat the M2 in the multi-core category with a score of 10,000. As a result, the M2 is only marginally outperformed by Qualcomm’s laptop flagship chipset, but later versions may do better as more are tested.
Although the tipster does not mention the performance and efficiency core count of the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4, he does provide information on CPU and GPU clock speeds. The performance cores of this particular version run at 3.00GHz, while the efficiency cores run at 2.30GHz. The alleged Adreno 740 graphics processor is said to be clocked at 1.00GHz. When we first wrote about the big Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 spec leak, we mentioned that the chipset included a 12-core CPU design.
The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 certainly outperforms the M2, which only has four performance cores, as this configuration has been split into eight performance and four efficiency cores. Although the remaining efficiency cores are said to be clocked at 2.50GHz, the performance cores of the older version were said to be clocked at 3.40GHz. This suggests that the newer version is much slower.
We do not yet know the ‘exact’ specifications of the final device, so Qualcomm may be looking for a compromise between performance and battery life to sell the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 as a suitable rival to the Apple M-series. But we do know that Qualcomm’s unique Oryon cores, which could give the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 an edge over its rivals, will be there. The flagship SoC should appear in a variety of products, and when it does, we’ll bring you the performance data.