Official Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 And Snapdragon 7c + Gen 3, The Two New Chips For PC And Chromebook: Here’s How They Are And When They Arrive
At the Snapdragon Tech Summit in progress, in addition to unveiling the very powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 smartphone chip, Qualcomm has lifted veils from the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 Snapdragon 7c + Gen 3, two new-generation chips mainly intended to equip Windows PCs and Chromebook.
There are significant differences of a technical nature between the two, with the first being a high-end (if not very high-end) chip while the second is intended to equip low and medium-end products. Despite the technical differences, the two are united by the ARM architecture, the same one that made the fortunes of the Apple Silicon M1 chips, putting “traditional” chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD in difficulty. Qualcomm then tries to put the sticks to the latter, presenting two chips with different performances but characterized by very high efficiency.
Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, How It’s Done
The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is the first PC chip made with a 5-nanometer manufacturing process. It is not a trivial specification since it is a number that represents a clear indication of the level of efficiency of the chips, and this means that the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 should have a perfect compromise between performance and autonomy. Qualcomm has promised a significant improvement in concert with the same consumption as the previous generation.
Thanks to the new Prime cores, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 will have – proudly reported by Qualcomm – 85% higher performance and 60% efficiency compared to direct competitors with x86 architecture, to be precise the “classic” Intel chips or AMD. Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is a chip built on ARM architecture like the Apple Silicon M1, which in itself guarantees a significant advantage in terms of consumption, even if the percentages provided by Qualcomm will be verified in the field.
The power is not lacking, and it is also remarkable; there is no doubt about this: it is an eight-core chip consisting of four 3 GHz Prime cores and as many low-consumption 2.4 GHz cores, therefore still quite powerful. Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 comes along with the Adreno GPU, which ensures 60% more performance than the previous generation of laptop chips.
Qualcomm has exploited its know-how gained in the smartphone sector to give its Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 a Spectra ISP, a chip that will allow laptops with the 8cx Gen 3 to have webcams with autofocus, white balance and adjustment of the best exposure. In terms of connectivity, Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 supports X55, X62 and X65 modems that reach download speeds on 5G networks up to 10 Gbps, and there is no support for Wi-Fi 6 / 6E networks.
Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 – When It Arrives
The first units of Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 and 7c + Gen 3 have already been entrusted to the hardware manufacturers, and Qualcomm itself has said that the first products to be equipped with them will arrive on the market within the first half of 2022, i.e. by June. Still, no news on the manufacturers who will adopt them first, but one of the two will almost certainly equate to Chromebook laptops.
