Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite leaves Intel & AMD in the dust, even at low power limits

The first laptops with Qualcomm's second-generation Snapdragon X Elite processors are available since last week and we already had the chance to test two of the new mobile processors. We had access to the high-end models Snapdragon X2 Elite in the updated Asus Zenbook A14 as well as the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme inside the brand-new Asus Zenbook A16.

Qualcomm managed to improve the performance even further and clearly beats the rivals from AMD (Zen 5) as well as Intel (Panther Lake) in single-core as well as multi-core scenarios. More interesting than the maximum multi-core performance, however, is the performance at lower power limits in our opinion, which is the case when you use the Whisper mode on the two Zenbooks. The fans stay very quiet (only ~30 dB(A) under load), but the multi-core performance in this mode (where the long-term power limit is below 20W) is still superior to rivals from AMD or Intel in High Performance mode. For all your everyday stuff, this means you get a very quiet or silent device, but you can obviously utilize the full performance if required.

The graphics performance was not amazing for the first generation, but Qualcomm improved the iGPUs significantly as well. While the previous Adreno GPUs were much slower than their counterparts from AMD and Intel, they are now much more competitive and the gaming performance is also much better. There are still certain limitations compared to regular x86 laptops, which is also the case for apps in general. However, the situation improved significantly over the last two years.

All in all, Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips put more pressure on AMD as well as Intel and both companies should be careful not to lose too much ground. For more information and benchmark results of the new Snapdragon models, please see our in-depth analysis article.