The Snapdragon X Elite can draw up to 100W, double and more than the Apple M3 Pro competition

It was initially said that the Snapdragon X Elite will have two “power limit” consumption modes depending on the level of delivered performance: PL1 of 23 W and PL2 of 80 W. However, according to the latest indicators, the latest Qualcomm ARM processor can draw up to 100W of electricity and that’s just the CPU, making it a much bigger consumer than its main Apple M3 Pro competitor.

However, several variables should be taken into account before criticizing the excessive consumption of the new chipset, which is expected to have lower consumption and greater energy efficiency in operation.

Snapdragon X Elite’s older manufacturing technology affects higher consumption

The top-of-the-line Snapdragon X Elite processor has a base clock set to 3.80 GHz, while the turbo step is set to an even higher 4.20 GHz and the Adreno GPU core is tuned to deliver 4.6 TFLOPS of performance. Compared to the other two models in this category, these fine adjustments aimed at achieving high operating frequencies will definitely lead to an increase in energy consumption.

According to Android Authority, 95 percent of all Snapdragon X Elite chips will be able to draw 98.50 W of electricity, while 50 percent of processors could achieve a lower maximum power consumption of 82.33 W.

As for the second version of the processor codenamed “X1E80100”, its consumption is around 52.92 W. It is strange that this version of the chip does not differ much from the “flagship” copy, because it works at the base clock value of 3.40 GHz and the turbo step set at 4 GHz, but the energy consumption is drastically lower.

In contrast, the chipset’s maximum power consumption threshold is still double or slightly more than the Apple M3 Pro’s 42W power consumption. It is obvious that TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing process greatly helped Apple’s chipset to save power and be more efficient in terms of energy consumption and utilization.

However, purely for comparison, the Apple M2 Pro, the previous generation processor manufactured using TSMC 4 nm technology, consumes 55 W. It is important to note that the Snapdragon X Elite is also manufactured using 4 nm technology.

Even Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H consumes about 80 W. This rather large difference in power consumption between the two Snapdragon X Elite versions with only a 400 MHz clock difference is due to Qualcomm’s decision to more aggressively overclock its “top-end” version of the processor, but also an indication of the limitations of TSMC 4 nm technology which becomes inefficient after reaching a certain operating frequency limit.

Also, the Snapdragon X Elite could hardly last longer at a constant 98.50W consumption due to overheating and would practically shut down the laptops immediately. In short, the more sensible approach for Qualcomm partners at this point would be to stick with the “X1E80100” processor version. It may work at a lower frequency, but we doubt the difference in performance will be more serious, and you will enjoy a much cooler device and extended laptop autonomy.