Arm yes, but not only that!
When we think of a PC, we systematically think of an AMD or Intel processor; so much so that their instruction set — x86 — is today synonymous with “high performance”. In this same straitjacket, CPUs including Arm instructions represent on-board and energy efficiency. However, Qualcomm’s entry into the field of laptop SoCs with the Snapdragon X seems to want to change the situation and establish itself in the laptop market. With numerous failures – the Snapdragon 8cx series – the American firm intends to bounce back and prove that this time, it’s the right one! But a CPU is nothing without a complete system around it, which is why (many) partners have rushed to offer machines that bring competition to the segment. Today, it’s a product from ASUS, the Vivobook S 15 (reference S5507QA to be exact), which is showing up on our test bench. His arguments? A breathtaking OLED screen, a neat premium aesthetic as ASUS knows how to do and, obviously, a Snapdragon X Elite. What does this look like in practice? The answer in the following pages!
Technical characteristics
Let’s start with a little paper tour from the owner:
| Technical Sheet | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Screen diagonal | 15,6″ | Dimensions | 35,26 x 22,69 x 1,47 – 1,59 cm |
| Give her | 16:9 OLED 120 Hz 2880 x 1620 | RAM | 32 Gio LPDDR5X |
| Processor | Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 @ 3.4GHz (42MB Cache, 12 cœurs / 12 threads); | Graphics card | Qualcomm Adreno |
| Storage | 1 To SSD PCIe 4.0 x4 | Connections | 2x USB 4.0 Type-C |
| Connectivity | WiFi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 | Weight | 1,42 kg |
| RGB | 1 zone (keyboard) | Food | 90 W (USB Type-C) |
| OS | Windows 11 Arm | Power supply weight | N.C. |
| MSRP | 1 499,99 € | Battery | 70 Wh |
The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite: Arm on laptop, finally!
As we told you in the introduction, this Vivobook S 15 is powered by a Snapdragon X Elite, one of Qualcomm’s most high-end processors for desktop PCs. Architecturally, the SoC is composed of 12 “Orion” Armv8.7 cores taken from the acquisition of the start-up NuVia by Qualcomm in 2021, a home-made Adreno iGPU displaying 4.6 TFLOPS, and an AI coprocessor also called NPU named Hexagon whose power peaks at 45 TFLOPS. The latter allows equipped machines to claim the sweet nickname of “Copilot + PC”, which means that integration of AI via Windows is relatively advanced, up to having a dedicated “Copiot” button allowing you to launch in one click the Microsoft assistant, and benefit from other features such as AutoSR, image upscaling via Windows which we will return to in the software section.
In terms of engraving, the newcomer comes directly from TSMC factories with the N4 process, which allows it to claim a performance ratio per watt three times higher than the competition. Add a small pile of additional IPs allowing you to control the various cameras, the associated LPDDR5X as well as the best current connections with USB 4.0 (3 ports), 5G sub-6 GHz and mmWave, WiFi 7 as well. than Bluetooth in version 5.4 — integrators still need to equip their machines with the antennas and other components necessary to express these functionalities.
Internally, the CPU ironically ignores the big. LITTLE (offered from Alder Lake on ISA x86) and offers 12 identical cores divided into 3 clusters of 4 cores sharing a common L2 of 12 MiB; a system cache of only 6 MiB shared between all clusters. For maximum application performance, vector extensions similar to AVX are present with NEON — a relatively dated Arm extension, pending a next generation in Armv9 equipped with the most recent SVE extension. As you will have understood, this CPU, on paper, offers the expected diversity on the architectural side in the face of competition from Intel and AMD; It remains to be seen what happens in practice: head to the next page for an external tour of our test Vivobook!
