The Surface Pro X world has been very quiet since the 2-in-1 launched last year to mixed reviews. However, a new Surface Pro that closely resembles the Pro X variant has been spotted online. It is powered by a new Snapdragon processor and may help the Surface Pro X make a dent in the market.

The news comes from Windows Latest, which discovered unnamed Surface Pro results posted publicly on the Geekbench 5 website. The entry does not mention the brand name, but one can infer its relevance from the name "OEMSR OEMSR Product Name DV."

The new Surface Pro is suspected to be running on the rumored "Snapdragon 8cx Plus" chip, and the Geekbench page clearly states that the machine is running an octa-core 3.15 GHz processor. The original Surface Pro X had a 3.0 GHz Snapdragon-based system-on-chip. Since Geekbench 5 was not released when the original Surface Pro X was introduced, the multi-core score of 3,092 for this new model cannot be compared.

Nevertheless, our Intel Core i7-powered Surface Book 3 scored 3,831 in the GB5 multiscore test, which is faster than this posted score.

An even more important part of this new Surface Pro X may be improved compatibility: according to Windows Latest, the Snapdragon 8cx Plus is expected to support 64-bit app emulation. If this includes x86 64-bit apps (and that is a big if), it will help the Surface Pro X, which has been heavily criticized for its inability to run some applications.

Last week, Apple finally revealed that it is working on its own ARM-based Mac with its own Apple Silicon chip. If Windows can also enter the ARM market, it will lead to a more harmonious future with respect to cross-platform emulation and virtualization; if ARM PCs do not achieve some success, Boot Camp will be effectively dead on the Mac, and the Parallels Desktop folks will have to do quite a bit to get Windows environments to run on Macs.