Intel Lunar Lake vs. Snapdragon X Elite: The Return of x86

After Qualcomm launched its ARM-based Snapdragon X chipsets for Windows laptops, many dismissed Intel and the x86 architecture. However, with the launch of Lunar Lake processors, Intel seems to be back in the game and confident about its new chipsets. With Lunar Lake, Intel is touting a massive improvement in efficiency, matching the performance per watt of the Snapdragon X Elite. So, we carefully compared Intel Lunar Lake and Snapdragon X Elite using the available data.

Intel Lunar Lake vs Snapdragon X Elite: CPU performance

Let’s start with the processor. Intel claims that its new Lunar Lake processor with eight cores (4x Lion Cove + 4x Skymont) offers 20% better performance per watt than Qualcomm’s 12-core Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-80-100). Intel calculated this figure from the UL Procyon Office Productivity benchmark.

Image courtesy of Intel

In another slide, Intel mentions that its top-of-the-line Lunar Lake SKU, the Core Ultra 9 288V, delivers 7% faster performance than the Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-80-100) in the Cinebench 2024 single-threaded test. Performance is similar in the Geekbench single-core test.

Intel seems to have avoided multi-threaded testing since the Snapdragon X Elite has 12 cores and all Lunar Lake models have 8. We’ll bring you more numbers and comparisons once we get our hands on a laptop powered by the new 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chipsets.

Image courtesy of Intel

In another set of benchmarks, Intel claims that the Core Ultra 9 288V tied with the X Elite (X1E-80-100) in the Speedometer 3 test. In PugetBench’s Photoshop test, Lunar Lake delivers a 17% performance gain, while Intel’s new processor delivers a 92% performance improvement in the Handbrake test. It could be that Handbrake ran under Prism emulation on the Snapdragon X Elite, but we can’t say for sure.

Overall, I would say that the Lunar Lake CPU is almost on par with the Oryon CPU in the Snapdragon X Elite. Of course, with more cores on the X Elite, multi-threaded performance would be much better on Qualcomm’s CPU. However, I tried to do an apples-to-apples comparison for your reference below by comparing the 8-core benchmarks of both CPUs.

Intel Lunar Lake vs Snapdragon X Elite: Geekbench scores

In this Geekbench test, we compared the lowest-end SKU of Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 5 228V) with the recently launched Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-46-100), as both feature 8 CPU cores.

Keep in mind that the Geekbench score of the Snapdragon X Plus was shared by Qualcomm running on a reference device (take it with a grain of salt). The actual score on retail units may change. Additionally, we used the leaked score of the Core Ultra 5 228V from Geekbenchwhich runs on a Lenovo laptop.

In the single-core test, the Snapdragon X Plus is about 7% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 5 228V, and the difference is 16% in multi-core scores, despite both having the same number of CPU cores. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus has a standard frequency of 3.4 GHz and can boost a single core up to 4.0 GHz. In contrast, Lunar Lake’s efficiency core goes up to 3.5 GHz and its performance core can reach 4.5 GHz.

Comparing the top-end Lunar Lake SKU (8-core Core Ultra 9 288V) with Qualcomm’s 12-core Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-84-100), the difference in single-core scores narrows to 3.6%. In terms of multi-core scores, however, the X Elite maintains a comfortable lead of around 25% due to the higher core count.

Remember that Intel is running the Core Ultra 9 288V at 5.1GHz to match the single-core performance of the Snapdragon X Elite, which runs at 4.2GHz. While it’s too early to give a conclusive answer as to which one is better in terms of performance, it seems that Intel lags slightly behind Qualcomm’s Oryon processordespite significant progress made with Lunar Lake.

Intel Lunar Lake vs Snapdragon X Elite: Battery Life

As for battery life, Intel claims that The Core Ultra 9 288V promises 14 hours of battery life on the UL Procyon Office Productivity benchmark. In the same test, the Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-78-100) only offers 9.5 hours of battery life. The test is performed on a 75 Wh battery from the same manufacturer.

Image courtesy of Intel

In fact, the Dell XPS 13, which is now available with Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-80-100) and Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, offers 27 hours of Netflix streaming on Qualcomm’s SoC and 26 hours on Intel Lunar Lake. In both tests, the screen brightness was set to 150 nits and 1080p Netflix content was streamed.

It seems like Intel has made great strides in battery life. The move to TSMC’s foundry has likely improved Lunar Lake’s efficiency. Since we don’t have a Lunar Lake laptop yet, we can’t make a conclusive judgment right away. But we’ll do a battery life comparison once we have a Lunar Lake laptop. And most importantly, we’ll test the battery backup when the device is put to sleep.

Intel Lunar Lake vs Snapdragon X Elite: GPU performance

When it comes to GPU performance, Intel has included a powerful 8-core Xe2 GPU and it decimates the Adreno X1 GPU of the Snapdragon X Elite. Intel claims that its Xe2 GPU on Lunar Lake is 68% more powerful than the Adreno X1-85 GPU available on the top-end X1E-84-100 SKU of the Snapdragon X Elite.

Image courtesy of Intel

Additionally, Intel mocked Qualcomm by stating that 23 Windows games do not run on the Snapdragon X platform due to incompatibility issues. Additionally, the Lunar Lake GPU supports real-time ray tracing, which is not available at all on the Snapdragon X Elite.

Image courtesy of Intel

Even when comparing the lowest-end SKU of Lunar Lake to the high-end Snapdragon X Elite GPU, Intel beats Qualcomm in Geekbench’s OpenCL test. Intel claims that Lunar Lake has the “world’s best integrated GPU,” and it looks like Intel has significantly upped the game on the GPU front.

Intel Lunar Lake vs Snapdragon X Elite: NPU CPU performance

Intel has once again made a breakthrough in the NPU field. designed a new NPU for Lunar Lake which can handle AI workloads from 40 TOPS to 48 TOPS, depending on the SKU. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite offers 45 TOPS across all its SKUs.

In the UL Procyon AI Computer Vision benchmark, Intel’s NPU scored 1,886 and 1,017 points on INT8 and FP16 data types, respectively. In comparison, the Snapdragon X Elite’s NPU scored 1,760 points on INT8 and failed to perform on FP16 data type.

Image courtesy of Intel

Finally, in the recently released Geekbench AI benchmark application, Intel’s NPU outperformed the Snapdragon X Elite’s NPU on both INT8 and FP16 data types. This shows that Intel has indeed designed a powerful NPU and that all new Lunar Lake laptops will be eligible for PC Copilot+ features with an update in November 2024.

Intel Lunar Lake vs Snapdragon X Elite: the verdict

While it is still too early to draw conclusions, the available data on Lunar Lake suggests that Intel has proven that x86 architecture can be designed for efficiencyMoving to TSMC’s foundry, adding onboard memory, and consolidating all the core units (CPU, GPU, and NPU) into a single compute tile resulted in a much more efficient chipset.

The Lunar Lake CPU is slightly behind the Snapdragon X Elite’s Oryon processor, but its integrated GPU is much more capable with Ray Tracing capability. And the NPU is also on par with Qualcomm’s Hexagon NPU. Not to mention, Intel has the advantage of compatibility, ensuring users don’t have to worry about running a certain app or game.

To conclude, the competition between the different architectures is quite exciting. I am excited to get my hands on a Lunar Lake laptop so that we can run various tests on our side and check the difference in battery life in real-world scenarios.