Qualcomm has once again made some big claims about the performance of its new Snapdragon X2 Elite CPUs against competing chips from Intel & AMD.
Qualcomm Claims Much Higher Performance For Its Snapdragon X2 Elite CPUs In Single-Core, Multi-Core, Graphics Tests Against Intel & AMD At Same Power, Says Competition Requires Up To 222% Higher Power To Match X2
Just a few hours ago, Qualcomm unveiled its next-gen Snapdragon X2 CPU family, which comprises Elite and Elite Extreme Edition chips. The new CPUs are a major upgrade over the first-generation Snapdragon X lineup, which aims at the Windows PC and AI PC segment.
Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 CPU Family Specs Rundown
Starting with a rundown of the specs, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 CPUs will be based on TSMC’s 3nm process technology, and feature the 3rd Gen Oryon CPU cores, brand new Adreno GPU cores, & a new Hexagon NPU. The CPU is currently segmented into two lineups, the X2 Elite and the X2 Elite Extreme.
The flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme edition CPUs will feature up to 18 cores in a hybrid combo, which includes 12 Prime Cores that operate at a single/dual-core boost frequency of 5.0 GHz, and a 4.4 GHz all-core boost, while the remaining 6 cores are tagged as “Performance” cores with a max all-core frequency of 3.6 GHz. The chip packs 53 MB of cache, an Adreno GPU with up to 1.85 GHz clocks, and up to 80 NPU TOPs. The Extreme Edition chips also house a 12-channel (192-bit) on-package LP5X memory with up to 228 GB/s of bandwidth.
The other two chips are part of the Snapdragon X2 Elite family, not Extreme Edition. The top SKU in this range is the “X2E-88-100” which offers 18 cores, up to 4.0 GHz all-core & 4.7 GHz single/dual-core boost, a GPU clock of 1.70 GHz, and 53 MB of cache. The GPU SKU is the same as the Extreme Edition, but the clock speed has been cut back by 150 MHz. This SKU is named “X2-90”.
And lastly, there’s the X2E-80-100, which is a 12-core SKU with 6 Prime Cores operating at up to 4.7 GHz single-core, 4.4 GHz dual-core, 4.0 GHz all-core clocks, 6 “Performance” cores operating at up to 3.4 GHz, 34 MB of cache, a X2-85 GPU SKU that clocks up to 1.7 GHz, 80 AI TOPS. Both Snapdragon X2 Elite CPUs feature 8-channel or 128-bit memory controllers with LP5X-9523 memory and offer 152 GB/s bandwidth.
Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 CPU Performance vs Intel & AMD
During the official keynote, Qualcomm put out some interesting slides highlighting the performance of its Snapdragon X2 CPUs. The first comparison shows the uplifts for the X2 lineup versus the X1 lineup, which are as follows:
Snapdragon X2 vs Snapdragon X1:
Up To 39% Single-Core
Up To 50% Multi-Core
Up To 2.3x Peak GPU
Up To 78% Peak NPU
The company then went on to compare the flagship Snapdragon X2 Elite against chips from Intel and AMD, such as the Core Ultra 9 285H “Arrow Lake-H”, Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 “Strix”, & the Core Ultra 9 288V “Lunar Lake”.
First, we have the single-core performance, where the wattage starts from 0W to 25W, represented by the relative performance for each of the four CPUs. Qualcomm claims that its Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is up to 44% faster in single-core performance (Geekbench 6.5) versus the competition at the same power, and to match this, the competition requires up to 144% higher power. Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme looks to peak out at around 20W in single-core tests, while the competing chips, such as Core Ultra 9 285H, can go up to 25W.
Moving over to multi-core performance in the same Geekbench 6.5 benchmark, Qualcomm claims that its Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme Edition CPU offers up to 75% faster CPU performance at the same power as its competition, such as the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, while the competition requires up to 222% more power to match that. Here, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme seems to cap out at around 50-55W while the Intel 9 285H peaks out close to 80W.
Qualcomm also showcases some real-world performance tests besides Geekbench, and claims the following:
Up To 53% Faster Browsing vs AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (SpeedoMeter)
Up To 49% Faster Microsoft 365 vs Intel Core Ultra 9 288V (Procyon Office)
Up To 2x Faster compression vs Intel Core Ultra 9 288V (7-Zip)
We also get to see some graphics numbers where Qualcomm claims that its 1.85 GHz X2-90 Adreno GPU offers up to 52% faster graphics performance at the same power as its competition, while the competition requires 92% more power to match that.
The tests were conducted using 3DMark Steel Nomad Light, and that’s a synthetic benchmark. It is not representative of real-world gaming performance. Qualcomm has announced various partnerships and upgrades on the Adreno side, but we should remember that Adreno graphics were a major disappointment in the last generation of X1 Elite chips.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 288V features a Battlemage iGPU with up to 8 Xe2 cores, while the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 offers up to 12 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores. Both of these iGPUs are comparable to one another & have a great set of drivers. If what Qualcomm is claiming here also translates into gaming, then that will be truly impressive, but given that we have also seen previous claims made in the past only to be let down by the actual gaming performance, I think we should take these with a pinch of salt until independent testing is conducted.
Finally, the company shares the AI performance achieved through its latest Hexagon NPU with up to 80 TOPS of compute. Qualcomm showcases a 4151 score within the Procyon AI Computer Vision benchmark, & that is a 5.7x increase over the competition. But versus the competition’s fastest NPU offering, it is 1.95x faster than Lunar Lake (48 TOPS), 2.38x faster than Ryzen AI 300 (50 TOPS), and 2.22x faster than Apple’s M4.