A series of new Windows apps now take full advantage of the Snapdragon X Elite. Depending on the use case, the Arm-based alternative may have already completed its catch-up versus x86 on Windows 11.
A large number of applications already worked out-of-the-box for Snapdragon laptops when they came out in July. For example, the Microsoft suite already works natively and makes full use of the NPU wherever Copilot+ functionality allows.
No more translation layer
However, many Windows apps have had to make do with “Prism,” the translation layer between x86 apps and the Arm architecture. That leads to performance problems and makes a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite a less interesting choice than, say, Intel Lunar Lake or AMD’s latest Ryzen AI chips.
Now Blender, Capture One and Affinity Photo 2 are fully supported on Snapdragon. Not only that: the NPU, a key requirement for Copilot+ PCs, now simulates 3D renders based on text commands. Qualcomm promises these will be presented at “warp speed,” but this will likely amount to about 10 to 30 seconds depending on the complexity of the simulated render.
With Affinity, the NPU involvement is of a slightly different nature. First of all, the Affinity suite was already optimized for Snapdragons in May, as Qualcomm points out. But now Affinity Photo 2 exploits the NPU by calculating Object Selection and Subject Selection via this chip. In photography tool Capture One, meanwhile, cropping and color grading can be outsourced to the NPU.
More and more use cases covered
Tech companies will often tell you about Personas, or the types of users expected to be interested in a particular product. With Windows 11, that’s essentially everyone, but the vast majority of them have very basic requirements. Those basics are already covered an Arm-based Windows laptop, with more than enough performance to also run simple apps via the Prism translation layer where needed. Still, native support for a broad spectrum of applications is needed, something that x86 chips have thrived on for decades. Clearly, the recent additions are aimed at media professionals. Once all your apps run on Arm, it’s a viable platform to go to.
Still, it will take more for Qualcomm to really rival Intel and AMD. Cheaper laptops with the Snapdragon X Plus, for example, have only recently hit the market; perhaps those will sell better than the current X Elite line. Either way, the reintroduction of Windows on Arm is proving to be a lot more credible than previous adventures with the x86 alternative.
Also read: Qualcomm pulls plug on Windows devkit PC