Qualcomm Is Getting Serious About Gaming

Over the previous few years, Qualcomm has been increasing its chip growth to cowl laptops and PCs. But immediately at its annual Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm introduced one other new enterprise, this time in gaming: the Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 platform.

By combining tech and options from its smartphone and laptop computer chips, Qualcomm is attempting to create a purpose-built chip designed to energy transportable gaming handhelds much like the Nintendo Switch or Valve Steam Deck. With a concentrate on making a chip meant to be used in Android gadgets, Qualcomm’s G3x seems to be extra targeted on the cell market by supporting current Android video games and sport streaming providers like Stadia, GeForce Now, and Xbox Game Cloud quite than attempting to compete instantly in opposition to conventional handheld consoles just like the Switch.

Qualcomm hasn’t offered detailed specs for the G3x, however the firm says its gaming chip will embrace assist for updatable GPU drivers, 10-bit HDR coloration, and refresh charges of as much as 144Hz at 4K resolutions. The G3x seems to be similar to Qualcomm’s new flagship cell chip—the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1—however Qualcomm says the G3x has been tweaked to raised benefit from bigger handheld console designs which have greater thermal limits and infrequently include some type of lively cooling (as a substitute of being fully fanless like a smartphone), whereas additionally delivering higher efficiency than you will get from a cellphone.

The G3x is designed to assist extra options not usually discovered on telephones, together with stereo haptics and the power to push content material out to a close-by TV or perhaps a blended actuality headset of some type.

But Qualcomm didn’t cease at making the chip. The firm additionally partnered with Razer to create the primary Snapdragon G3x Handheld Gaming Developer Kit.

It’s necessary to say that this dev package is strictly meant to assist builders create apps that may higher make the most of the chip’s superior capabilities, and as such, Qualcomm has no plans to make the dev package accessible on the market. But for individuals who have needed an Android-based various to the Switch, the Snapdragon G3x dev package gives an attention-grabbing take a look at the type of gadgets we’d truly have the ability to purchase someday subsequent yr.

The G3x dev package sports activities a 6.65-inch HDR OLED show with a full HD+ decision, a built-in 5-MP webcam so you’ll be able to stay stream video games instantly from the dev package, assist for each 5G and Wi-Fi 6E, four-way audio system, and built-in buttons that may be mapped to an Android sport’s default on-screen controls.

It stays to be seen how Android sport devs will react to the provision of extra highly effective {hardware}, however the G3x platform may assist pave the best way for extra bold titles that push the type of graphics we usually anticipate from conventional cell video games.

Qualcomm’s gaming chip lacks a few of the extra superior options we see from gaming PCs, similar to tremendous sampling tech (i.e. Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution) or ray tracing, so there’ll nonetheless be a big hole between the G3x and methods with discrete PC GPUs.

Even although there aren’t particular plans to promote the G3x dev package to the general public, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Razer launch a client machine with a very related design and options within the not-too-distant future. Now that this chip is within the wild, it’ll be very attention-grabbing to see what different OEMs would possibly do with it.