Tech Advisor - UK (2020-07)

JULY 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 97

We were interested to compare the Qualcomm
Snapdragon8cxprocessortothemorepowerful
semi-customMicrosoftSQ1chipinsidetheMicrosoft
SurfaceProX.QualcommannouncedtheSnapdragon
8cx in late 2018, and while it doesn’t include a ‘prime
core’ for burstworkloads,it maintainsthesamefour
‘performance’coresrunningat 2.84GHz,balancing
thoseagainstfour‘efficiency’coresat1.8GHz.
WhiletheSQ1boastsamorepowerfulCPUand
GPUcombination–includinganAdreno 685 GPU,
asopposedtotheAdreno 680 insidetheGalaxy
BookS– it also has to render the Surface Pro X’s
2,880x1,920display,versusthemoreconventional
1080pdisplaywithintheGalaxyBookS.
We havethreebenchmarksforevaluatingthe
GalaxyBookSasaPC.Thefirst,PCMark10’sApps
suite,usestheactualMicrosoftOfficesuitetomeasure
app loading times, and also how quick and responsive
the GalaxyBookS is withspreadsheets, word
processing,andthelike.
Weranthetestona recentCorei7-based(Whiskey
Lake)LenovoThinkPadX1Carbonaswell.Withascore
of 5,951,theX1Carboneasilysurpassesthe4,615
Samsung’sGalaxyBookSrecorded.Butdoesthis
numbermatterintherealworld?Yes,andno.
The PCMark 10 Appstestoffersa moregranular
breakdownofitsresults.IttooktheLenovoX1Carbon
2.2secondstocalculateonetest,astockhistory
metric,thattheGalaxyBookSrequired7.1seconds
tocomplete.SimplyopeningWordrequired1.9
secondsfortheX1Carbon,2.5secondsfortheGalaxy
BookS.OpeningatestdocumentinExcelrequired