When we heard that Qualcomm is working on an Apple M1 competitor, we were thrilled to know what the San Diego-based company has in its stores. The chip is hailed as the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 and is referred to as the SC8280.
We know that Qualcomm focuses on performance with Gold+ and Gold cores, discarding the power-efficiency cores that it included in the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2. Reports indicate that Qualcomm has tested its Gold+ cores at 2.7 GHz and the Gold ones at 2.43 GHz.
According to recent sources, a Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD) supposedly containing the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 has made its way to Geekbench. The benchmark site listing states that the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 has eight cores and a 2.69 GHz clock speed.
Before moving on to the scores, it’s good to remember that the score has been achieved with an engineering sample. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 has 40% better single-core performance than the Snapdragon 8cx and 15% lower than the Snapdragon 888. Coincidently, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 manages just 56% of Apple M1’s performance in the same benchmark.
But, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 gets closer to the Apple M1 in the multi-core benchmark though, However, its score is only 64% of what Apple’s chipset achieves.
However, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 beats the Core i7-1065G7 by 5% in multi-core work and is 9% behind the Core i7-1165G7. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is also about 20% shy of the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U and 14% behind the Ryzen 5 4600U.
Summing it all up, the new chip from Qualcomm does not come close to matching the Apple M1, even though, it is supposed to be the Cupertino giant’s chip rival.