Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme benchmarks showcase promising CPU performance increase over Snapdragon X Elite

Qualcomm's newest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 came out swinging in first-party and independent benchmark analyses, finally bridging the gap between Apple and Android. That raises the question, does the same apply on the laptop front? Qualcomm's in-house benchmarks of the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100 highlight a mixed bag, but a strong overall showing nonetheless. With an eighteen core CPU, Qualcomm has an advantage in raw firepower this time. Additionally, its single-core boost clock now sits at 5.0 GHz, a lot higher than its last-generation counterpart, which maxed out at 4.3 GHz. 

The Qualcomm chip manages to outperform Apple's M4 Max in Geekbench's single and multi-core tests. It even has a convincing lead over AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Strix Halo chip. The competition is a lot closer in Cinebench 2024, with the Apple M4 Pro and Apple M4 Max taking the lead back in single and multi-core performance. 

Compared to its last-gen counterpart, the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100, the Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-96-100 offers up to a 50% improvement in multi-core performance thanks to its extra core count. Overall, it is shaping up to be a formidable competitor, while these numbers are Qualcomm's in-house data, they shouldn't be too far off in the real world. 

Unfortunately, the Adreno X2-90 GPU found on the Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-96-100 still falls short of its Apple counterparts. While it does outperform the regular Apple M4, the Apple M4 Pro and Apple M4 Max have a strong lead. It does, however, offer over a 100% performance increase over the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 in 3DMark Steel Nomad.

The GPU continues to be the weak link for Qualcomm's laptop PCs, and while some of their lackluster performance can be attributed to immature drivers, it also lacks the sheer CU count to take on dedicated solutions, making it less than ideal for gaming.