The notoriously confrontational tech site SemiAccurate claims that Qualcomm is cheating on the benchmarks of its new Snapdragon X Elite and Plus laptop processors, and Qualcomm has now responded to those accusations. The Snapdragon X Plus, announced yesterday, joins the previously announced X Elite in Qualcomm's upcoming processor lineup for Windows notebooks. The chips stand out as Qualcomm's first potentially competitive laptop processor against Apple, Intel, and AMD, and the best chance for Windows on Arm to take off. However, SemiAccurate.com claims that Qualcomm has been far from forthcoming with its curated benchmark results that have been presented to the press.
SemiAccurate, claiming two "major" OEMs and a "deep source at Qualcomm" for their benchmark cheating claims, insists that Qualcomm benchmarks are impossible to recreate even by class-leading OEM developers.
A Qualcomm representative sent Tom's Hardware an official comment on the matter, saying succinctly, "We stand behind our performance claims and are excited for consumers to get their hands on Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus devices soon.”
Back at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit conference held last October, the public saw the first benchmarks of the forthcoming X Elite processors. These numbers, claimed to be clean by SemiAccurate's sources, were slower than expected, though the Qualcomm source claimed the software wasn't final. And those benchmarks were a complete black box — no one at the conference could see the settings used for testing, and vague charts showing performance against competitors Apple and Intel were unverifiable.
