What you need to know The Snapdragon 8cx got benchmarked against the Intel Core i5-8250U.

The 8cx chip often beats a Core i5 in performance, nearly doubles battery life.

Press were invited to run the benchmarks themselves to validate.

Electron and Unity game engine are going native ARM too.

The forthcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx processor built for Windows 10 is getting a little more real. Today at Computex 2019 in Taipei, Taiwan the ARM chip manufacturer put its latest Windows 10 custom 8cx processor up against an Intel Core i5 demonstrating just how powerful it is while also delivering nearly double the battery life. Qualcomm teamed up with UL (formerly known as Futuremark) for a new PCMark10 benchmark that lets reviewers compare an ARM chip like the Snapdragon 8cx with a traditional x86 Intel platform under equal environments. The test was released a few months ago in PCMark10 along with the new Night Raid graphics test, but up until now, we have not seen the 8cx matched up against an Intel Core i5. Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more Additionally, UL announced a new app-test that more closely reflects how people use computers daily. UL described the new tests as real-world and not synthetic in that test runs apps from the Microsoft Store, including Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) to simulate "common scenarios and workloads." There's also a new battery test that that uses the same apps from the performance test as well as looping full HD video playback and idle screen time to give a robust picture of how battery performance can hold up on laptops. Press who attended the private Qualcomm event were invited to run the benchmarks themselves to test out the Snapdragon 8cx, which is expected to be released in the coming months in new laptops and convertible PCs.

Positioned against the 8th generation Intel Core i5-8250U with a max turbo frequency of 3.40 GHz the Snapdragon 8cx did quite well, often beating the Core i5 in PowerPoint, Word, and Edge browser usage. Interestingly, Microsoft Office is not natively compiled for ARM and technically runs emulated, meaning the Snapdragon 8cx was actually at a disadvantage. Similar results were found with the PCMark10 Night Raid graphics test with the Snapdragon 8cx edging out frames-per-second - 37.10 FPS versus 29.47 FPS.

Battery tests comparing app usage with the Snapdragon 8cx to the Core i5-8250U resulted in the ARM chip lasting 17 hours at the upper limit with the Intel processor behind at just 10 hours and 21 minutes. That said, the Snapdragon laptop was running at full HD while the Intel one was 2K, which is a bit unfair though it would not explain the nearly 7-hour difference either.