The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is Qualcomm’s latest Arm-based PC chip. But can it compete against Intel and the Apple M1?<\/b>
\nThe new Snapdragon PC chips use more modern manufacturing processes, allowing them to achieve big leaps in performance and efficiency. Intel is expected to take the wraps off its long-anticipated Alder Lake mobile processors any day now. This is the first time we\u2019re seeing mainstream x86 processors adopt a hybrid core technology, with discrete performance and efficiency cores. Simply put, Intel hopes to emulate Arm\u2019s big. LITTLE success. The use of efficiency cores should improve performance per watt over previous generations, especially in less demanding scenarios. See Also: Arm vs x86 \u2014 key differences explained Qualcomm leads Intel in performance per watt today, but that might change when Alder Lake mobile chips arrive. Apple’s 2020 M1 chip still manages to comfortably outperform the competition. The new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 narrows the gap, but not by a whole lot. Snapdragon-powered Windows portables are far from the best value today, especially considering the Apple M1’s low price of admission. So is the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 dead on arrival? Not quite, but it\u2019s definitely going to take a compelling device (and an accompanying use case, perhaps) to propel it to success. Right now, all the platform stands to offer is similar performance to x86-based laptops. Slightly longer battery life than its direct rivals and mmWave 5G support are not worth a premium to many. See also: What is 5G, and what can we expect from it? 2022 probably isn\u2019t the year of Arm on Windows on Arm has improved considerably in 2021, but hardware is still playing catch up.<\/p>\n