Qualcomm launches Snapdragon X2 Elite chip for Windows computers

Last year, after more than a decade of trying, Qualcomm finally made Windows on ARM laptops a reality, leaving both Intel and AMD on edge and pushing Intel out of consumer Microsoft Surface computers.

This time, at their biggest annual conference, the second generation of chips was launched. With two separate versions: Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme.

Qualcomm makes a huge claim right in the headline of its press release: it says this is “the fastest and most efficient processor for Windows PCs.” That’s probably not going to sit well with Intel and AMD, but this is Qualcomm’s stage, so the two rivals will have to figure out how to respond later.

Qualcomm has its own backing for this claim, of course. The company claims its 3nm chip offers up to 31% faster CPU performance than the previous generation Snapdragon X Elite at the same power level, or up to 43% less power consumption, and up to 2.3x higher GPU performance per watt (not a pure performance increase) thanks to the new 1.85GHz GPU.

On the CPU side, the chip uses the 3rd generation Oryon CPU, which will also be featured on Qualcomm's new flagship mobile chip Snapdragon 8 Elite 5, but with up to 18 cores, 12 of which can run at 4.4GHz, or up to two cores at 5GHz — a clock speed Qualcomm says is a first for ARM CPUs.

There's also a new Hexagon 80 TOPS NPU for AI tasks, which offers 37 percent higher performance with a 16 percent improvement in power consumption, and the company claims it's the fastest laptop NPU available today.

Qualcomm describes all of this as a “legendary leap in performance,” claiming that the Elite Extreme in particular offers “up to 75 percent faster CPU performance” than competitors of the same power.

While it doesn't specify which competitors are being referenced in the press release, it appears Qualcomm is comparing it to some of the most powerful (and power-hungry) laptop chips on the market, including the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. You can also see that Qualcomm doesn't label either axis of the chart.

Qualcomm also claims that this power savings will deliver “multi-day battery life,” which is similar to what the company said about last year’s Snapdragon X Elite. The impressive 14-18 hours of battery life on last year’s Copilot computers clearly makes a big difference.

Still, the improvements sound substantial, and some of them come from specific new pieces of silicon. Gaming on ARM, which was still in need of improvement last year, will get a boost thanks to a new 18MB dedicated high-speed cache that Qualcomm calls “Adreno High Performance Memory.”

Qualcomm says Adobe content creators will see significant improvements over last year's laptop: 28% faster photo editing in Photoshop, 43% faster exporting from Lightroom, and similarly improved Premiere video analysis.

It’s interesting to see the company testing the X2 Elite Extreme at more than 50W. Last year, Snapdragon chips were only meant for thin and light laptops, but 50W allows them to expand into larger PCs.