{"id":41416,"date":"2025-09-24T21:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T21:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/41416\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T21:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T21:42:09","slug":"qualcomm-announces-snapdragon-x2-elite-and-extreme-for-windows-pcs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/41416\/","title":{"rendered":"Qualcomm announces Snapdragon X2 Elite and Extreme for Windows PCs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, after well over a decade<\/a> of trying, Qualcomm finally made Windows on Arm laptops a thing<\/a>, putting both Intel and AMD on notice<\/a> and shoving Intel out of consumer-grade Microsoft Surface machines. Today, we\u2019re learning about the second generation of the chip that made it happen, one which\u2019ll now come in two distinct flavors: the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme.<\/p>\n

Qualcomm is making a gigantic claim right in the headline of its press release<\/a>: it says these are \u201cthe fastest and most efficient processors for Windows PCs.\u201d I\u2019m sure Intel and AMD will have something to say about that!<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a><\/p>\n

From Qualcomm\u2019s Snapdragon Summit video. Image: Qualcomm<\/p>\n

But for now, the company claims its 3nm chips offer up to 31 percent faster CPU performance than the previous-gen Snapdragon X Elite at the same power, or can require 43 percent less power, and with up to 2.3x the GPU performance from a new 1.85GHz GPU. On the CPU side, it\u2019s using a 3rd-gen Oryon CPU that\u2019ll also feature in Qualcomm\u2019s new mobile flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite 5 chip, but here with up to 18 cores, 12 of which can run up to 4.4GHz, or up to two of them at 5GHz \u2014 a clockspeed which Qualcomm says is a first for Arm CPUs.<\/p>\n

You can see more specs below, and at Qualcomm\u2019s website<\/a> and overview PDF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Qualcomm<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a new 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU, for AI tasks, that offers 37 percent more performance with a 16 percent power consumption improvement, and the company claims it\u2019s the fastest laptop NPU by far:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Qualcomm<\/p>\n

Qualcomm\u2019s characterizing all of this as a \u201clegendary leap in performance,\u201d claiming the Elite Extreme in particular offers \u201cup to 75 percent faster CPU performance\u201d than competitors at the same power.<\/p>\n

While it doesn\u2019t say which competitors it\u2019s talking about in the press release, it appears that Qualcomm is comparing against some of the most powerful (and power-hungry) laptop chips in the market, including the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, and you can see Qualcomm isn\u2019t labeling both axes of its graphs:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Qualcomm<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Qualcomm<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Qualcomm<\/p>\n

Qualcomm also claims these power savings will lead to \u201cmulti-day battery life,\u201d but that\u2019s what the company already said about last year\u2019s Snapdragon X Elite. (We saw 14 to 18 hours from last year\u2019s laptops, so perhaps that\u2019s multi-day defined as \u201ctwo eight-hour workdays.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Qualcomm<\/p>\n

Still, these sound like very solid improvements, and some of them come from distinct new portions of the silicon. Gaming on Arm, which still needed work last year<\/a>, will get a boost from a dedicated new 18MB of high speed cache that Qualcomm\u2019s calling \u201cAdreno High Performance Memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Qualcomm says Adobe creators will see big improvements over last year\u2019s laptops: 28 percent faster photo editing in Photoshop, 43 percent faster exports from Lightroom, and a similar boosts to Premiere video analysis. Razer\u2019s Min-Liang Tan also announced today that Razer will bring its Synapse software to Windows on Snapdragon, which is likely to be a polarizing<\/a> announcement. He notably did not promise that Razer will make a Snapdragon-based gaming laptop.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s intriguing to see that the company\u2019s testing its X2 Elite Extreme at over 50W of power; last year, Snapdragon chips were just for thin and light laptops, but 50W lets them scale into bigger PCs.<\/p>\n

Note that when Qualcomm had its coming out party with Microsoft last year, the laptops arrived later that year. That\u2019s not happening this time around: they\u2019re \u201cexpected to be available 1H26,\u201d the company writes.<\/p>\n

Qualcomm\u2019s announcement also doesn\u2019t mention whether these chips will feature in its hinted-at collaboration with Google on Android for PC<\/a>, but it\u2019s possible the company will mention that at its Snapdragon Summit<\/a>, which is streaming as I write this. We may add a few more details to this story as the Summit continues.<\/p>\n

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