Microsoft and Qualcomm have been working together for a few years to bring a new-class laptop category based on mobile chips. Moreover, last year, we saw a couple of such notebooks packed with the Snapdragon 835 chip. But seems it’s not enough for the effective performance of the Windows operating system. A few days ago, Microsoft released the Surface Pro X tablet. Its appearance is more modern than that of the Surface Pro 7. But what’s more interesting, it is equipped with a processor called ‘Microsoft SQ1’. The latter is also known as the Snapdragon 8cx Custom Edition. As for now, we can take a look at its parameters that are coming our way from Notebookcheck.
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The Microsoft SQ1 is based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx chips. But it has a higher CPU and GPU core frequency. The CPU core clock frequency is up to 3 GHz (8cx is 2.84 GHz). The four Kryo 495 gold cores are based on the ARM Cortex-A76 architecture, and the four Kryo 495 silver cores are using the ARM Cortex-A55. Their frequency is approximately 1.9 GHz. The integrated X24 LTE modem supports up to 2 Gbps download speed. In addition, the SoC integrates ac-Wifi and dual-channel 1866 MHz LPDDR4x memory controllers.
Also Read: Samsung Galaxy Book S Launched With Snapdragon 8cx SoC, Windows 10: Features, Price
As the manufacturer claims, the performance of this processor is similar to the Intel Core i5 8th generation U series (for example, the i5-8250U). The GPU Adreno 685 is also a customized version. Microsoft claims they have achieved 2 TFlops performance, while the Adreno 680 is 1.8 TFlops.
The Microsoft SQ1 chip uses TSMC’s 7nm process and is very energy efficient. Therefore, the notebooks sporting the Snapdragon 8cx can use passive cooling.
