ARM’s Cortex-X5 Rumored To Be Underperforming, With High Power Surges And Low Multi-Core Scores Afflicting The Upcoming Core Design

The new Cortex-X5 design from ARM appears to be running into problems, with a new rumor stating that the super core is experiencing severely high power consumption at raised clock speeds and offering diminished multi-core performance when that maximum power limit is reduced. While this may not be an issue for Qualcomm as its Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is said to adopt custom CPU designs, MediaTek may be sweating profusely as it has to eventually announce the Dimensity 9400, which is said to adopt the same Cortex-X5 in its CPU cluster.

Chipsets like MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 will suffer the most as it will ditch ARM’s power efficiency cores in favor of the Cortex-X5 for a raw performance uplift

In a previous rumor, the Dimensity 9400’s CPU cluster was rumored to include the Cortex-X5, with three Cortex-X4 that would challenge the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 with a multi-core score of nearly 10,000 points. However, while we were impressed with these results, we could not provide an impartial overview without knowing about the power draw first, and according to Revegnus on X, a rumor out of China states that the Cortex-X5 is underperforming in both performance and efficiency.

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A bump in clock speed is said to drive the Cortex-X5 power consumption through the roof, whereas reducing those frequencies has an adverse effect on the overall multi-core score. This means that ARM and MediaTek will need to collaborate further and tweak the Cortex-X5 to achieve the ideal balance, otherwise, there is little benefit to obtaining a high multi-core score with equally high power consumption.

Looking at this rumor, Apple’s A18 Pro appears to be the better prospect because even though it scored lower than both the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and Dimensity 9400, the company will likely prioritize ‘performance per watt’ while giving up a little performance to achieve unrivaled battery life. On the other hand, Qualcomm and