Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme Arrive With Size

Qualcomm revealed the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 as its next big thing for the mobile market. However, the company has been investing in the field of PCs with its new Oryon cores. The company has just unveiled the new Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme chips for Windows on ARM machines. They bring gains in performance and efficiency, and as you may wonder, are a great evolution over the first Snapdragon X Elite generation.

The new Snapdragon X2 Series consists of three chips. The X2 Elite comes with a 12-core CPU, the X2 Elite with an 18-core CPU, and the X2 Elite Extreme with 18 CPU cores as well. All three new chips are based on TSMC's 3nm process.

According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is designed for Ultra-premium Windows 11 PCs that tackle "expert-level workloads", while the regular X2 Elite is suited for premium PCs across "resource-intensive workloads". The chipmaker also promises a "multi-day battery life" thanks to the enhanced power efficiency.

All three Snapdragon X2 Elite SoCs feature third-generation Qualcomm Oryon CPUs, similar to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, but with up to 18-core CPU cores on the X2 Elite Extreme.

The base Snapdragon X2 Elite comes with 6x Performance CPU cores at 3.4 GHz and 6x Prime cores at 4 GHz that can boost up to 4.7 GHz. The 18-core version of the X2 Elite comes with 12 prime cores and 6 performance cores, split with the same max clock speeds. The Extreme version has faster 4.4 GHz clock speeds on prime cores. They boost up to 5 GHz and up to 3.6 GHz on the performance core side.

Qualcomm promises 31% faster CPU performance at ISO Power and 43% less power draw than the previous generation of Elite chips. The X2 Elite series also features a new Adreno GPU. It promises a 2.3x increase in performance per watt and power efficiency compared to the 1st gen Snapdragon X Elite chips. You can also get DirectX 12.2 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenCL 3.0 support.

The new chips come with Qualcomm's latest Hexagon NPU with 80 TOPs of AI processing. As per Qualcomm, this is the world's fastest NPU for laptops. All three X2 Elite chips support LPDDR5X RAM, UFS 4.0 storage. They feature Qualcomm's Snapdragon Guardian Tech for remote manageability.

The first laptops featuring the new chips are expected for Spring 2026.