I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t fantastically anxious about the launch of Qualcomm’s new PC chip. While there’s always been a fun (if ruthless) rivalry between Intel and AMD, the computer scene gets a lot more interesting when an outside player can come in and disrupt.

I’ve been preaching the benefits of ARM based PCs for a while now, and I genuinely believe a lot of folks out there would have preferred having better battery life away from a charger over the more traditionally powerful laptops and convertibles offered over the last several years, even for some issues with software compatibility.

I felt validated in this when Apple switched all of their laptops and desktops over to ARM System on Chips (SOCs).

Qualcomm has offered solutions in this market in the past, but their new chip could springboard Windows users into a much more competitive tier opposite MacBooks and Mac desktops.

While we wait for manufacturers like Dell, HP, Samsung, Lenovo, and Microsoft to ship new Windows on ARM devices, I feel it’s time Qualcomm helped us understand the X Elite a little better.

Specifically, how much power does X Elite consume?

I recently got to visit the Qualcomm campus for the first time, to play with some of the reference systems Qualcomm built to demonstrate their new chip. These are not systems consumers will be able to buy, but they give us a broad look at some of the performance expectations of X Elite.

In the above video, you might have heard me mention the reference design’s TOTAL power draw. Qualcomm is testing two “flavors” of potential laptop design. They showed us a “24 watt system” and they have test numbers for an “80 watt system”.

I’ve recently read articles from other tech publications that conflate these numbers into the power consumption of the X Elite chip. From one publication:

We have previously reported that the Snapdragon X Elite can operate at power limits of 23W and 80W, but the image only says that the notebook was running at the ‘Balanced’ power plan, with no other details provided.

This is NOT how Qualcomm is testing their reference designs. These two tiers of performance are not describing the power consumption of the chip, but the power consumption of the ENTIRE laptop in total.

This is a bit of an issue for us techies. We really don’t know how to compare this chip against the performance claims made by Intel, AMD, and Apple.

Smartphone Roots…

Qualcomm is probably best known by geeks for their expansive line of smartphone SOCs. When we talk about phones, we tend to discuss battery life in a slightly more holistic way than we do laptops and desktops. Not just for how long the device can last in the field, but also for how well a phone can manage heat. Phones are small. They’re densely packed. The screen is slapped right on top of the chip and battery.

For a phone user, there are precious few die hard nerds that care about the performance of individual components, and far more people who only want to get better battery life and avoid random instances of “HOT POCKET”. It’s why a generic discussion of “Screen On Time” (with little consistency in what is running on the screen) can generate more discussion than more detailed discussions about CPU performance in office or video editing apps. The phone is often treated as a simpler communication appliance, even when it costs more than a laptop.

[For you geeks that DO care about more granular SOC testing than just running a Geekbech test, I still do my real-world app comparisons over on my Patreon.]

Qualcomm is “simplifying” the conversation around X Elite, but in a way that I think is confusing potential consumers and some of our experienced tech reviewers.

When we talk about the power consumption of an Intel chip, we tend to oversimplify the measurement by using the Thermal Design Profile (TDP). This is a measurement of the maximum heat generated by the chip that can be cooled by that computer’s cooling capabilities. I’m oversimplifying something that’s already been simplified. It’s actually not the best way to discuss power consumption, but a lot of techies arrived at this as a shorthand for quickly discussing power and heat, measured in watts.

I digress.

Back to the chip, when we say an Intel laptop chip has a TDP of 28W, we mean JUST THE CHIP has a TDP of 28W. We’re not accounting for any other components in the laptop. We’re not talking about RAM, or Storage, or Radios, or the Display. We mean, the processor by itself has a TDP of 28W.

That’s not what Qualcomm is describing.

Qualcomm’s reference systems are cloaked in a very broad description of power consumption. When Qualcomm showed us those “24 watt systems”, they were describing the thermal load of the entire system. Not just the chip, but the screen, RAM, storage, and radios COMBINED, could be operated at a peak TDP of 24 watts.

This is not how we usually talk about laptop performance.

When Qualcomm shows us higher performance scores for the “80 watt” laptop, Qualcomm is not tripling the power to the chip. Instead, Qualcomm is comparing the expected system built around a fan-less thin-and-light notebook against the expectation of a bigger, beefier, media consuming machine.

The thin-and-light might have a smaller, lower resolution display, less RAM, less, storage, and there’s no fan.

The “80 watt” laptop chip will consume more power (as it has a fan to disperse more heat), but it likely also has more RAM, more storage, and a larger, higher resolution display.

To help with that context, just the displays can make a big difference in how a system handles run time away from the charger.

Plugging in two of my 1080p 15″ portable monitors, my dimmer LCD at its lowest brightness pulled 2W from my power station, and 7W at it’s brightest setting.

My brighter OLED pulled 3W at its dimmest setting (with a mostly dark desktop being displayed), but at its max brightness with a bright web page displayed peaked at 14W. The OLED is brighter and nicer to look at than the LCD, but it can roughly double the power consumption of the LCD.

This is before we also try to measure the impact of higher resolutions on the CPU and GPU, or other factors like refresh rate on battery life.

It’s sort of like this…

The X Elite is not a 24W chip in the Qualcomm reference design laptops, but we don’t know how much power it’s actually consuming.

My guess is that it’s probably closer to a 12-14W part, and the rest of the laptop components are adding to the total thermal calculations. I have no official data to back that up, just casual mentions from Qualcomm engineers and PR about the reference designs we were allowed to play with.

Often, the X Elite test systems were compared against Intel powered laptops running the Core Ultra 7 155H, and we often saw higher performance numbers in synthetic benchmarks than the Intel systems.

Intel describes the TDP of JUST THE CHIP as such:

The entire system thermals of Qualcomm’s test laptop are slightly under the base power consumption of JUST the Intel chip.

We don’t know if the X Elite has a “turbo” mode that can draw more power for a brief task, but again, talking to Qualcomm engineers, we’re assuming the X Elite test system PEAKS at 24W. The Intel Core Ultra 7 chip (in a properly adapted system for higher power draw) can peak at 115W. JUST THE CHIP can draw up to 115W in a short burst of computing.

Put Another Way…

I love my Steam Deck. It’s a great way to play games on the go. I have one of the FIRST batches of Steam Decks, with the LCD (and the whiny fan). It’s a punchy portable, but it certainly pales in performance against a beefy gaming laptop. We know we’re trading outright performance for better portability.

When Valve discusses power consumption, we rate the chip in the Steam Deck at a peak TDP of 15W, but it generally performs more consistently around 10W. That’s JUST THE CHIP in the Steam Deck. When reviewers have tried calculating the total system consumption of the Steam Deck, estimates range from roughly 20W to 25W. That estimate includes the RAM, Storage, LCD, fan, and radios. The battery does not last long operated at this maximum peak power draw.

The claim Qualcomm is making might be described like this:

The fan-less X Elite laptop reference design operates above the performance of an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H powered laptop, but within the peak power consumption of a Steam Deck.

The Explanation is Difficult…

It took me roughly 1400 words to correct for the simple sentence or two in other articles, which can misrepresent the claims being made by Qualcomm. We’re not measuring oranges to oranges yet. We need to see what manufacturers do with this chip, and the kinds of systems they build around X Elite. The companion component decisions will have a significant impact on things like performance and battery life.

I’m sure Qualcomm is operating under manufacturer requests and disclosure agreements to detail very specifically ONLY what Qualcomm is working on. To date, the conversation around X Elite has only highlighted EXACTLY what Qualcomm is responsible for in upcoming Windows on ARM systems, and this has only been detailed through Qualcomm internal testing devices.

Those numbers are still very encouraging, and I’m even more excited for future laptop announcements this summer. Ultimately, Qualcomm only has themselves to blame for some of this techie confusion regarding specs, power, and performance.

Even if it is just better detailing how their reference designs are constructed, without fully publishing the chip specific details on TDP, that would better illuminate this issue for techies leading up to the launch of X Elite powered systems.

Even waiting for consumer systems to ship, only Qualcomm can properly deliver the last data points reviewers would need to explain and compare system performance.

I think it would be better for Qualcomm to get ahead of those conversations now, than need to work harder to re-educate consumers after products launch.