Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite, Elite Extreme SoC: up to 5.0GHz with up to 18 cores

Qualcomm took the wraps off its latest mobile silicon during its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii this week, with the new Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme mobile processors. Check them out:

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The new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips are fabbed on TSMC's new 3nm process node, with 3rd Gen Oryon CPU cores, brand new Adreno GPU cores, and a spankin' new Hexagon NPU for AI workloads.

Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processor features up to 18 CPU cores in a hybrid combo -- with 12 Prime Cores that operate at single/dual-core boost of up to 5.0GHz, and 4.4GHz all-core boost -- while the other 6 cores are tagged as "Performance" with a max all-core frequency of 3.6GHz.

• Read more: Qualcomm says 90% of games run on its new Snapdragon X2 Elite, and faster than Intel and AMD
• Read more: Intel launches Core Ultra 200V series 'Lunar Lake' to battle both AMD and Qualcomm in AI PCs

Inside, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme features 53MB of cache, an Adreno GPU with up to 1.85GHz clocks, and the Hexagon NPU with up to 80 TOPS for AI workloads. Qualcomm bakes in a 12-channel (192-bit) on-package LPDDR5X memory controller offering up to 228GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

That's the "Extreme Edition" version of the Snapdragon X2 Elite, with the regular Snapdragon X2 Elite split into two variants: "X2E-88-100" and "X2E-80-100". The "X2E-88-100" features up to the same 18 CPU cores but the single-core boost is knocked down to 4.7GHz, the multi-core max frequency down to 4.0GHz, and the Adreno GPU boost down to 1.70GHz.

Under that we've got the "XE2-80-100" with only 12 cores in total (6 Prime Cores) that spool up to 4.0GHz, with 34MB total cache (down from 53MB) and a slightly less powerful Adreno 840 GPU that still boosts up to 1.70GHz. Both of the Snapdragon X2 Elite chips feature an 8-channel (128-bit) memory controller with LPDDR5X-9523 memory that feature up to 152GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

Qualcomm put out some official numbers during its keynote, comparing the Snapdragon X2 against the Snapdragon X1, with the new Snapdragon X2 being up to 39% faster in single-core, up to 50% faster in multi-core, up to 2.3x faster in peak GPU, and up to 78% faster in peak NPU speeds.

The company went a step further comparing its new Snapdragon X2 Elite processors against its competitors in AMD with its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU and the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H "Arrow Lake-H" processor. Qualcomm used some "real-world" performance tests including Speedometer where its new Snapdragon X2 Elite is up to 53% faster in web browser performance over the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, up to 49% faster in Microsoft 365 performance (Procyon Office) than the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V "Lunar Lake" processor, and up to 2x faster file compression speeds than the 288V (7-Zip).

Qualcomm benched its new Snapdragon X2 Elite processor in 3DMark Steep Nomad Light -- which to remind you, is a synthetic benchmark and not real-world gaming -- where it is 52% faster than its competitors' chips, while its competitors peak performance requires 92% more power -- an impressive number, that's for sure.

Just remember, this is against AMD's weaker Strix Point APU -- but there is the FAR more powerful Strix Halo APU which doubles the CPU core count, and over doubles the GPU performance -- so we're looking forward to seeing how these new Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 processors fare in real-world testing.

Windows on Arm still sucks... so there's that. There's no match for an x86-based AMD or Intel CPU when it comes to productivity and gaming... no matter how good an Arm-based CPU gets.

We will see Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite processors in the wild in 2026.