Microsoft’s SQ2 Chip Powering the New Surface Pro X Is Not an Upgrade Over the SQ1

Microsoft Surface Pro X  is powered by the new SQ2 chip that is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, but several tests prove that the SQ2 is not an improvement over its predecessor, SQ1.

Surface Pro X upgrade 4

The few benchmarks conducted by Dr. Windows show that SQ1 and SQ2 performance is nearly the same. The scores from three tests are mentioned below:

Browser benchmark Jetstream 2

•Surface Pro X 2019 with SQ1: 89,614

•Surface Pro X 2020 with SQ2: 90,664

Antutu benchmark

•Surface Pro X 2019 with SQ1: 286,740

•Surface Pro X 2020 with SQ2: 286,271

Geekbench 4

•Surface Pro X 2019 with SQ1: 3,530 (single core), 11,927 (multi core)

•Surface Pro X 2020 with SQ2: 3,627 (single core), 12,042 (multi core)

Microsoft and Qualcomm’s partnership failed to improve the performance of custom ARM-based silicon, which is clearly by the fact that Apple’s M1 chip outperformed the SQ2 when running in Windows virtualization mode.

SUR20 ProX Feature StudioMode RGB 5e2163412854e 1024x576 1
ProEXR File Description
=Attributes=
capDate (string): “2019:05:08 8:43:55”
channels (chlist)
compression (compression): Zip16
dataWindow (box2i): [0, 0, 5999, 3374]
displayWindow (box2i): [0, 0, 5999, 3374]
dwaCompressionLevel (float): 45
lineOrder (lineOrder): Increasing Y
pixelAspectRatio (float): 1
rs/camera/DOFAspect (float): 1
rs/camera/DOFFocusDistance (float): 131
rs/camera/DOFRadius (float): 0.1
rs/camera/FStop (float): 8
rs/camera/allowOverexpDesat (int): 1
rs/camera/allowedOverexp (float): 0.1
rs/camera/aperture (v2f): [1.4173, 0.797231]
rs/camera/aspect (float): 1.77778
rs/camera/blackCrushAmount (float): 0
rs/camera/blackCrushThresh (float): 0.25
rs/camera/cdm2 (float): 10000
rs/camera/farPlane (float): 10000
rs/camera/fov (float): 17.0612
rs/camera/iso (float): 100
rs/camera/nearPlane (float): 0.1
rs/camera/saturation (float): 1
rs/camera/shift (v2f): [0, 0]
rs/camera/shutterRatio (float): 100
rs/camera/transform (m44f): [{0.663926, 0.235852, 0.709631, -96.309}, {0, 0.94896, -0.315396, 45.3733}, {0.747798, -0.209399, -0.63004, 80.4773}, {0, 0, 0, 1}]
rs/camera/vignetting (float): 1
rs/camera/whitepoint (v3f): [1, 1, 1]
rs/hostname (string): “gpuRender01”
rs/version (string): “2.6.36”
screenWindowCenter (v2f): [0, 0]
screenWindowWidth (float): 1
type (string): “scanlineimage”
=Channels=
A (half)
B (half)
G (half)
R (half)
This portrays that Microsoft ran a marketing move to persuade to purchase the Surface Pro X while they offered no performance increase. It is reported that Microsoft and Qualcomm are designing their own chips to compete with Apple’s M1.