During Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit last week, the chipmaker gave us a look at the benchmark performance of its X2 Elite Extreme laptop processor, alongside the performance metrics of the 8 Elite Gen 5. As we mentioned previously, we were unable to share the expected performance of the laptop processor at the time, but with the embargo lifted, we can provide you with some numbers.
Before I share the numbers, I’ll do the customary and tell you that the numbers obtained here were obviously under a controlled environment, regardless of Qualcomm’s claim that it tested its components in room temperature scenarios.
@lowyatnet #PaidTravel_Snapdragon Snapdragon flew us out to Hawaii for the annual Snapdragon 2025 Summit, where it announced the new 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile SoC and X2 Elite Series for laptops.Thanks Snapdragon, for flying us out here! #SnapdragonSummit2025 #Snapdragon8EliteGen5 #X2EliteSeries #Qualcomm
By that, I mean that the reference laptops that were used and on display were running on 48GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 1TB of storage internally. This may appear to be the norm for all X2 Elite-powered laptops moving forward, but Qualcomm did also mention that it will be leaving the choice of components to brand partners.
To quickly recap, the X2 Elite Extreme houses a total of 18 cores, 12 of which are what Qualcomm is designating as “Prime” cores, running at 4.4GHz for all 12, with up to two cores able to run at 5GHz. The other six are labelled as Performance Cores, and run at speeds up to 3.6GHz.
The top-tier CPU has a total cache of 53MB. The onboard Adreno GPU, dubbed X2-90, has a maximum clock of 1.85GHz, while the new and improved Hexagon NPU delivers 80 TOPS, nearly double the performance of its predecessor. Moving on, it also supports LPDDR5x RAM, but this time at a faster frequency of 9,523MT/s, with the standard capacity set at 48GB, but with room to go beyond 128GB.
On paper, the X2 Elite Extreme is clearly better than the competition, and even beats out its predecessor, the X Elite, to which I tested out two variations of the processor via the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 and ASUS Zenbook A14. In respect to the prowess of its NPU, I’ll say this: 80 TOPS is certainly nothing to scoff at, and neither is the fact that it is now the highest performing laptop NPU at this point, beating out AMD’s own 50 TOPS NPU, found primarily within the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 that I’ve tested in multiple laptops at this point.
However, comparing it to Intel’s top-end Arrow Lake laptop CPU seems a pointless, if not low hanging fruit, given that the NPU in that processor isn’t as potent as its Lunar Lake counterpart. Also as mentioned, you expect to see laptops with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme in it ship out by next year.
