SemiAccurate claims Qualcomm is lying about its Snapdragon X series chips' performance

SemiAccurate is making a bold claim that Qualcomm is cheating on its Snapdragon X chips benchmarks.

If Snapdragon X is new to you, it's Qualcomm's upcoming Arm-based chips for Windows PCs. The idea is to create highly power-efficient Windows notebooks.

Recently, Qualcomm previewed the chips, showing off benchmark figures, which showed its new chips in a positive light. As we noted in our earlier report, Qualcomm's benchmark results were positive and showed in going toe-to-toe with and, in some instances, beating out the latest chips from Apple, Intel, and AMD.

However, as it is now being revealed, Qualcomm reportedly dodged questions from the media who were present at the preview about how these results were obtained.

According to reports, they did not disclose what the TDP (thermal design power) was for the test machines. Knowing the TDP is crucial because power is part of the equation that determines performance. All things equal, a chip that's drawing 40W will outperform one that draws 20W. Furthermore, they did not allow anyone to independently test the machines. Android Authority said:

Even when we benchmarked the Snapdragon X Elite, it was a very hands-off affair. We could only watch Qualcomm’s chosen benchmarks happen and could not install other apps or check details about the benchmarking device.

In response to all this, SemiAccurate is now claiming that the results are made up and that the numbers that were shown to the press cannot be replicated. It said:

So what are they cheating on? The short version is that the numbers that they are showing to the press and [sic] are not achievable with the settings they claim. Qualcomm is showing a different set of numbers to OEMs and these also are not achievable with the settings they claim. This information comes from two tier 1 OEMs and other sources. 

SemiAccurate goes on to talk about the extent of Qualcomm's obfuscation, claiming that after OEM got initial samples and did their own testing, they got results that were around 50% of what Qualcomm claimed its chip would get. One OEM even used the term "Celeron" to describe the Snapdragon X Elite's performance. 

However, like Qualcomm themselves, SemiAccurate could not provide details about their own claims. They did not show their own benchmark results or any other hard evidence, citing that doing so could compromise the anonymity of their sources. Fair enough, but I'm afraid that's not going to cut it when you are making claims as audacious as these.

As it stands, it's hard to draw any definitive conclusions. Fortunately, Microsoft is widely expected to unveil new Surface devices powered by these new chips soon. And once these devices go on sale and get into the hands of reviewers and customers, we'll finally know who is right.

However, one thing's for sure, someone is going to end up looking very bad at the end of all this.

Source: SemiAccurate via Android Authority

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