Summary

  • The introduction of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite will bring a significant shift to the Windows PC market, with DaVinci Resolve gaining native support for Arm processors next year. This gives it a major advantage over Adobe Premiere, which has been slow to add Arm-based Windows support.
  • The Snapdragon X Elite offers up to 60% more peak performance than an Intel Core i7-13800H, along with twice as fast graphics performance and lower power consumption. This paves the way for truly portable creator laptops for Windows users, a feat that Apple has already achieved with its Arm-powered Macs.
  • With the backing of a major app like DaVinci Resolve and the impending arrival of powerful Snapdragon X Elite devices from major PC brands, the future looks promising for Windows on Arm. This marks a significant catch-up for Windows, which now has a fully capable video editor that supports Arm processors.

The Windows PC market is set to see a huge shift with the introduction of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, the most powerful Arm chipset for Windows PCs. And to make use of that power, Qualcomm has announced that DaVinci Resolve is adding native support for Arm processors on Windows next year.

DaVinci Resolve is one of the best video editing software you can get on Windows, and arguably the biggest rival to Adobe Premiere. However, Adobe has been moving at a glacial pace adding support for Arm-based Windows devices, so Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve is going to have a major advantage on that front. Without native performance, most existing Snapdragon processors are borderline unusable for video editing on Windows, so this is pretty big news.

But of course, the devices you really want to use for video editing will be powered by the Snapdragon X Elite. Qualcomm is promising up to 60% more peak performance compared to an Intel Core i7-13800H, which is already one of the fastest processors you'd find in a creator laptop. Plus, graphics performance is up to twice as fast, and this is all while using far less power than an Intel processor would. With a properly optimized app like DaVinci Resolve, the dream of a creator laptop that's truly portable is at hand for Windows users. DaVinci Resolve also has a number of AI-based features, and Snapdragon chips have excellent AI performance, so you can expect great performance in these kinds of tasks, too.

Of course, this is something Apple has had for some time. Blackmagic added native support for Apple Silicon back in March 2021, just months after Apple launched its first Macs powered by its in-house Arm processors. And of course, macOS also has Final Cut Pro, so Windows is just now catching up in terms of having a fully capable video editor that natively supports Arm.

Regardless, with support from such a major app and powerful hardware on the way, with devices from all major PC brands, the future is looking promising for Windows on Arm, probably more so than it ever has in the past six years.