In October 2023, Qualcomm launched the new Snapdragon X Elite platform, making another attempt to enter the PC laptop market, which subsequently led to the development of Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X.
In the past two years, the Snapdragon X series laptops have gradually flourished, with major OEM manufacturers releasing approximately 150 different product designs, and the system and software ecosystem has also been gradually improved.
Now, the new generation of Snapdragon X2 Elite series has finally arrived, including Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, claiming to be “the fastest, most powerful, and most energy-efficient Windows PC processors available today.”
However, note that the Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops will not be released until next year, with a concentration expected at the Taipei Computer Show.
The Snapdragon X2 Elite series, like the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for mobile, utilizes the third-generation N3P 3nm process and the third-generation self-developed Oryon CPU architecture, achieving full synchronization for the first time.
Looking back, the first-generation Oryon CPU architecture was used in the mobile Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, while the second generation was used in the PC Snapdragon X series.
Qualcomm claims that the new architecture has improved peak performance by up to 31% compared to the previous generation, while the power consumption required for the same performance has been reduced by up to 43%.
The Snapdragon X2 Elite series integrates up to 18 CPU cores, a 1/3 increase over the previous generation, and, like the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, is divided into two groups:
One group consists of 12 super cores (Prime Core) with a maximum frequency of 4.4GHz, an increase of 600MHz, and the other group consists of 6 performance cores (Performance Core) with a maximum frequency of 3.6GHz.
Furthermore, if only one or two cores are activated, the frequency can reach up to 5GHz, an increase of 700MHz, marking the first time an Arm instruction set compatible CPU has reached the 5GHz milestone.
The system cache capacity has reached 53MB, an increase of 11MB.
Memory support has been upgraded to LPDDR5X-9523, paired with a 192-bit width, providing a high bandwidth of 228GB/s, with a capacity exceeding 128GB.
Storage supports NVMe PCIe 5.0 SSDs, UFS 4.0, SDUC SD Express, or SDXC UHS-I.
The performance comparison numbers are very impressive, but they are just for reference.
Under the same power consumption, GeekBench 6.5 single-core performance leads competitors by up to 44%, while competitors would require up to 144% more power to achieve the same performance.
Under the same power consumption, GeekBench 6.5 multi-core performance leads competitors by up to 75%, while competitors would require up to 222% more power to achieve the same performance.
Qualcomm even explicitly named three competitors with similar positioning: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, Intel Core Ultra 9 288V, and Intel Core Ultra 2 285H, claiming productivity performance leads by up to 53%, 49%, and 2 times respectively!
In terms of GPU, the Snapdragon X2 Elite series shows significant improvements, supporting a series of the latest APIs including DX12.2 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenCL 3.0, but OpenGL was not mentioned.
Additionally, ray tracing has been improved, and GMEM (Unified Memory Management) has been enhanced.
Video output supports DP 1.4, eDP 1.5, with a maximum of 4K144 for the internal screen and up to three 4K144 or 5K60 for external screens.
Compared to the previous generation, gaming performance has made significant progress, with improvements of up to 2.2 times, and the number of playable games is increasing.
Qualcomm claims that compared to x86 competitors, GPU performance under the same power consumption leads by 52%, while competitors’ power consumption can be up to 92% higher for the same performance.
The Hexagon NPU did not provide technical details, only stating that it integrates two Micro NPU units in the sensor hub, achieving a computing power of 80 TOPS at INT8 precision, which is currently the strongest NPU, an increase of nearly 80% over the previous generation’s 45 TOPS.
In comparison, the AMD Ryzen AI 300 and Ryzen AI Max 300 series only achieve 50 TOPS at the same INT8 precision, while the Intel Core Ultra 200V series achieves only 48 TOPS, the Core Ultra 200H series only 13 TOPS, and the Apple M4 achieves 38 TOPS.
In practical applications, NPU performance has improved by up to 47% compared to the previous generation, but no comparison with competitors was provided.
Productivity creation is also a major core direction for Snapdragon X laptops, with an increasing number of optimized applications, especially in areas where NPU can be utilized.
No comparison with competitors was made in terms of performance, only stating that it has been comprehensively improved, with a maximum increase of 64%.
Overall, the Snapdragon X2 Elite series has achieved a maximum improvement of 39% in single-core performance, 50% in multi-core performance, up to 2.3 times in GPU performance, and up to 78% in NPU performance, representing a comprehensive leap forward!
It is worth mentioning that the Snapdragon X2 Elite series laptops also support Snapdragon Guardian security protection technology, embedded at the hardware level, allowing for quick location and recovery of stolen laptops, even when powered off.
Note that the above refers to the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (X2E-96-100), while the Snapdragon X2 Elite is divided into two versions:
One is X2E-88-100, with the only difference being a lower frequency: super core frequency of 4.0GHz, performance core frequency of 3.4GHz, and single-core boost frequency of 4.7GHz.
The other is X2E-80-100, with a total core count reduced to 12, halving the number of super cores to 6, total cache reduced to 34MB, frequency remains at 4.0GHz, performance core frequency remains at 3.4GHz, single-core boost frequency remains at 4.7GHz, but dual-core boost frequency is reduced to 4.4GHz.
Both versions of the Snapdragon X2 Elite have GPU frequencies reduced to 1.7GHz, memory frequency remains unchanged but the width is reduced to 128-bit, thus the bandwidth is reduced to 152GB/s, with a maximum capacity limited to 128GB, but NPU computing power remains at 80 TOPS.
In other aspects, the Spectra ISP supports two 18-bit channels, with a single or dual camera of 36 million pixels, and video recording up to 4K30.
The baseband integrates Snapdragon X75, with a peak downlink rate of 10Gbps, uplink rate of 3Gbps, supporting Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, Bluetooth LE, and interfaces supporting USB4, three USB-C ports, with expansion supporting 12 PCIe 5.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes (X2E-80-100 downgraded to 8 PCIe 5.0 lanes).
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