Discussion Qualcomm Snapdragon Thread

[eek2121]

Aha!

Performance, Efficiency, Compatibility....

View attachment 95777

Could you elaborate what means?

Zen 5 is a banger of a chip.

 

[gdansk]

Relevant to SDXE on Windows:

ARM64 Boot Camp: ARM64EC and ARM64X Explained

And also not the first person concerned about the lack of AVX2 support.

 

[eek2121]

Link seems to be busted, but yes, AVX2 is an issue. Also, AVX-512.

 

[Tup3x]

Nice, the slides mention that still no AVX support though, just SSE4 for emulation. Most of the older games should have a SSE4 path and newer ones are more likely to get a port.
A bigger stumbling block might be anti-cheats (kernel-drivers) that need to be rewritten to ARM64. That means that most of the stuff that has anti-cheat problems with Steam Deck most certainly won't work on this as well.

The fact that they support even DX9 and OpenGL in drivers is a really solid commitment.

Anti-cheat software are the real problem. X Elite should be more than good enough to at least run games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail without any issues even when emulated but that's not going to happen for now at least. I sure hope that Qualcomm is working with popular free to play game devs and especially with anti-cheat software devs.

 

[eek2121]

Anti-cheat software are the real problem. X Elite should be more than good enough to at least run games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail without any issues even when emulated but that's not going to happen for now at least. I sure hope that Qualcomm is working with popular free to play game devs and especially with anti-cheat software devs.

The issue is the drivers, not the chip. Yes, emulation will hurt the framerate, but there will be games that don’t work at all due to drivers.

I will donate $100 to charity if they even get the top 50 steam games running without performance or compatibility issues. I would even go so far as saying the same for the top 10 games, but I would hope Qualcomm is explicitly testing that.

For non gaming it is a good chip.

EDIT: you are right, however, anticheat will probably be grumpy.

 

[FlameTail]

How does Apple's Game Porting Toolkit work in comparison?

Doesn't it have the the issues that X Elite will face?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Zen 5 is a banger of a chip.

Zen 5 is power efficient enough to challenge the SD X Elite in thin and light notebooks with better iGPU?

 

[FlameTail]

Zen 5 is power efficient enough to challenge the SD X Elite in thin and light notebooks with better iGPU?

Highly skeptical about that, especially since Strix Point is will use same node as Phoenix/Hawk Point.

iGPU efficiency might be winnable for AMD, since Qualcomm didn't fire all cylinders in terms of iGPU. So AMD probably will beat them in that category.

 

[trivik12]

What I hope all of them to be close to on another and we get a price war. Customer wins for sure.

 

[Doug S]

How does Apple's Game Porting Toolkit work in comparison?

Doesn't it have the the issues that X Elite will face?

Apple has a much harder problem. X Elite has big advantages:

running on Windows - check
have DirectX available - check
have the ability to use Nvidia/AMD GPUs in case the onboard GPU isn't quite compatible - check (I'm assuming one or both will make drivers available at some point)

Apple has to help developers port to a different OS, and as they do that face the choice of either lose performance with a graphics translation layer or doing the extra work to target Metal and TBDR - and even if Apple's GPU is equal on benchmarks to a given level of Nvidia/AMD GPU that doesn't mean they are equal in all ways. One may do some things much faster and others much slower. Maybe Apple's is better at handling really big textures but worse at handling a large number of really small textures, or vice versa, so depending on what a given game needs...

The big hurdle for X Elite as far as gaming is convincing gamers to adopt Windows on ARM, because even if your favorite games have been ported what happens when some big new game comes out that is x86 only? You can hope it performs OK when translated, but that's where you run into issues like anticheat bugging out, and you're still going to be operating at a disadvantage compared to x86 players.

Apple's one advantage is that unless Windows/ARM gets a double digit share of the Windows market, the Mac will be a bigger target market. Its mostly a greenfield for gaming, but that's simultaneously a good thing and a bad thing.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Could you elaborate what means?

Zen5 turns other $things into paste.

Highly skeptical about that

Qualcomm's only advantage is the fabric power.
Oh and ML DSP slapfight might be interesting since ideologically similar functionally different VLIW machines.

have DirectX available - check

See, Qualcomm supports D3D in the most nominal of ways.
The less we talk about their VLK/OGL drivers, the better.

have the ability to use Nvidia/AMD GPUs in case the onboard GPU isn't quite compatible - check (I'm assuming one or both will make drivers available at some point)

Technically yes, but any CPU without AVX(2) support isn't worth much for dGP gaming.

 

[FlameTail]

I believe there is enough space in the market for both AMD and Qualcomm to grow (at Intel's expense of course )

 

[adroc_thurston]

I believe there is enough space in the market for both AMD and Qualcomm to grow (at Intel's expense of course )

There isn't.
QC only wants premium™ designs because unmedicated loons there treat PC as a margin padding for their premium handset biz instead of an actual market.

Literally the reason why QC spent years pushing modems there.
Worked for phones, must work for PC amirite? Flawless reasoning.

 

[FlameTail]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1772295505524973783

Snapdragon X Elite runs Baldurs Gate at 1080p 30 FPS

 

[FlameTail]

Github Table that compares specs of Snapdragon 7 and 8 series SoCs:

Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 and 8 series spec comparison (2024)

Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 and 8 series spec comparison (2024) - Snapdragon_7_8_series_2024.md

gist.github.com

 

[FlameTail]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/behind-plot-break-nvidias-grip-ai-by-targeting-software-2024-03-25/

Qualcomm is part of the coalition

Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm (QCOM.O), opens new tab, Google and Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going after the chip giant’s secret weapon: the software that keeps developers tied to Nvidia chips. They are part of an expanding group of financiers and companies hacking away at Nvidia's dominance in AI.
"We're actually showing developers how you migrate out from an Nvidia platform," Vinesh Sukumar, Qualcomm's head of AI and machine learning, said in an interview with Reuters.

 

[FlameTail]

Revegnus is gone.

He was the best smartphone SoC leaker on X. Gave us so many Snapdragon leaks.

Rest in peace.

 

[adroc_thurston]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/behind-plot-break-nvidias-grip-ai-by-targeting-software-2024-03-25/

Qualcomm is part of the coalition

whoa didn't know Intel moved OneAPI under the Linux Foundation.
Makes sense though, they've lost a huge chunk of that team.

 

[FlameTail]

Qualcomm's only advantage is the fabric power.

What about idle power?

 

[moinmoin]

whoa didn't know Intel moved OneAPI under the Linux Foundation.
Makes sense though, they've lost a huge chunk of that team.

Good catch. So this is essentially about https://uxlfoundation.org/ taking over OneAPI from Intel. Arm is also part of the steering group.

 

[adroc_thurston]

What about idle power?

That's fabric power.

 

[Tup3x]

Stable version of Chrome coming out this week.

Download the new Chrome on your Arm-compatible Windows PC

Rolling out this week, download Chrome on your Arm\u002Dcompatible Windows PCs powered by Snapdragon for faster browsing on the web.

blog.google

 

[FlameTail]

FlameTail brings you some interesting tidbits;

Snapdragon X Elite PCs better be bangers

Enough good laptops. We need great ones.

www.xda-developers.com

Microsoft will be holding an event on May 20th to announce the consumer versions of Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6.

Mmm. I wonder which OEM is it?

More interestingly, we have this banger from Canalys:

According to this, there will be Snapdragon X Elite 10-core and 8-core versions!

The elusive Snapdragon X Plus?

 

[soresu]

whoa didn't know Intel moved OneAPI under the Linux Foundation.
Makes sense though, they've lost a huge chunk of that team.

I don't see it making any great headway.

Rust web layout engine Servo went in that direction and I don't think it's ever going to reach any serious level of release under the LF.

 

[soresu]

Unclear whether this is emulated or native, but interesting news none the less for WoA's future as a games platform:

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite hits 30 FPS in Baldur's Gate 3

The bare minimum performance, but suggests a beefy integrated GPU

www.theregister.com