Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X Series ads are wickedly funny, but are they fair to Intel?

Date:
Wed, 07 May 2025 18:34:22 +0000

Description:
A matter of perspective

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Qualcomm's trio of new commercials humously take on Intel-based laptops and make a seemingly salient point: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series chips will run
at max performance even unplugged, while Intel-based systems will only
operate at 55%. But there's some nuance in there that makes these claims somewhat less than clear-cut.

While two of the ads, " The Max Performance You Deserve ," and " Office Tripped ," lean heavily into humor to make their case, the first ad, " What's the Intel? ", is more pointed and uses the line, Heres a little intel on whats really inside"

Clever, right? Qualcomm squeezed the brand name and the "Intel Inside" marketing campaign into one well-crafted dig.

It's in this ad where Qualcomm clearly lays out its core premise, stating
that the SnapDragon X Elite PC "runs at max performance when it's unplugged." The ad then shows the Intel-based system and says, "that PC drops to as
little as 55%".

Another ad, "The Max Performance You Deserve," focuses on the humor of asking people in various situations to "give 55%" of performance of love, of a
bonus, of devotion to a country. The video does close with a Qualcomm rep telling a consumer, "Yup, PCs powered by Intel can cut performance up to 55% when unplugged, but with Snapdragon X Series, max performance when
unplugged."

The last ad, " Office Tripped ," shows how "when PC's powered by Intel
perform at 55% when unplugged, it's like your whole team does." The ad comically depicts employees half-dressed, tables with half their legs gone, and signage half-lit. You get the idea. A measure of what?

Of course, at no point in any of these ads does Qualcomm say that 55% of Intel's performance is worse than Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Series max performance. In fact, based on the systems they used to come up with those numbers, I'm not sure they could.

In the fine print, Qualcomm explains the numbers came from a Cinebench 2024 Multi Core benchmark run in Windows 11. The Qualcomm system was a Dell XPS 13 with a Snapdragon Elite running at 3.8Hz (unless it's been overclocked to 4.3GHz). It's compared against a Dell XPS 13 running an Intel Core Ultra 9 288V, which is Intel's top-of-the-line Ultra processor running at 5.1 GHz.

Considering Qualcomm chose a system running Intel's most powerful Ultra processor, it might be difficult to draw direct comparisons to the Snapdragon X Elite chip.

Of course, that's not really what Qualcomm did here. There are no direct performance comparisons. Instead, this is just a measure of how the systems, or rather the CPUs, perform when unplugged. The Intel system slows down its high-end Core Ultra 9 to, I bet, Core Ultra 5 processor-level performance.

I would be curious to see what sort of performance hit an Intel Core Ultra 5 (245T) takes when unplugged. It might perform at something far higher than 55%, if not "max" performance.

Sure, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series ads are cutting and funny, but I'm not sure they're entirely fair to Intel. I want my laptops to maintain as much performance as possible when unplugged, but I also want them to maintain battery life.

Higher performing chips will draw more power, and the system, depending on
how Intel and OEMs configure it, knows enough to reduce that power draw when you unplug the laptop.

Snapdragon X Series CPUs were built with mobile in mind. They run at a lower GHz than the fastest-performing X86 chips, and with a lower power draw, of course, they do a better job of maintaining max power.

In general, I love the mobile chip in laptops and desktops revolution that
was kicked off by Apple Silicon. These mobile SoCs (system on chips) have transformed mobile computing and are a net positive for consumers and the industry, but let's not cloud the issue with ads that seem to make a direct comparison when, in fact, they really don't. You might also like Qualcomms
new Snapdragon X arrives at CES 2025, and Im excited about how this CPU could seriously heat up competition with budget laptops and Copilot+ PCs Microsoft just revealed two new Surface devices here are ... Microsoft Surface Laptop
7 review: makes me believe in ...



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/computing-components/qualcomms-latest-snap dragon-x-series-ads-are-wickedly-funny-but-are-they-fair-to-intel


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