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Rumored tests of early Windows 10 on Qualcomm processor fail to impress

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Although Qualcomm’s SnapDragon processors have been successful at powering recent generations of mobile devices, that performance doesn’t necessarily translate to the Windows 10 ecosystem. In rumored early tests of laptops running Windows 10 on Qualcomm SnapDragon 835 processors, the benchmark results are anything but impressive.

Earlier this year Microsoft and Qualcomm promised much from the introduction of new Windows 10 laptops powered by the usually mobile processors, suggesting they would help make big gains in battery life and responsiveness. Early tests suggest otherwise, and though any pre-release benchmarks should be taken with a note of caution, they aren’t a good sign.

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The rumored tests were apparently conducted using Geekbench and were dug up by Winfuture.de (translation by GizmoChina). They showed a single-core score of 1,202 points and a multi-core score of 4,068 when running Windows 10 S 32-bit. The scores took a roughly 10-percent hit when running Windows 10 Pro, too.

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By comparison, a relatively low-end Intel Core-i3 CPU achieved a single core score of 3,692 points and a multi-core score of 11,860 points, as highlighted by MSPowerUser. That’s a near three-fold increase in performance with the Intel hardware versus the Qualcomm equivalent.

It’s important to note that these are pre-release numbers and really even pre-debut numbers, as we have not seen the fabled devices that Microsoft and Qualcomm are reportedly working on. That could mean that further optimizations need to be done. It could also be that a focus on battery life has left the devices a little underpowered, though Microsoft did initially claim that there would be no trade-off in overall performance for claimed increase in battery life.

It could also be that mobile processors like the SnapDragon 835, which are incredibly powerful when confined to a smartphone, just don’t perform as well on a desktop operating system as does hardware designed specifically for that kind of platform.

At the very least these results should be taken as a warning that if and when the SnapDragon-equipped laptops are officially unveiled, interested customers should wait for proper testing from third-party sources. Testing the actual hardware in a real-world setting will give us a much firmer idea of what these laptops are capable of.

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Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale
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