Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite runs Red Dead Redemption 2 at over 60 FPS in gaming test
At Notebookcheck, we recently tested the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-88-100 in the latest Asus Zenbook A14 laptop, and the chip seems like a good upgrade over its predecessor. It easily beat rival chips like the latest Panther Lake from Intel and Zen 5 chips from AMD in CPU synthetic benchmarks.
However, one major issue with last year’s Snapdragon X Elite chips was their very poor graphics performance. It scored 5,560 points in the 3DMark Fire Strike Graphics test, while the latest Snapdragon X2 Elite scored 9,974. For reference, the latest Snapdragon chip for Windows appears to be as good as the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V in terms of graphics, as it scored 9,956 in the same test, which is almost identical.
Seeing these figures in benchmarks is one thing but actually witnessing the game running on the said processor is another. So when the YouTuber ETA Prime got their hands on the Snapdragon X2 Elite powered Asus Zenbook A14, they ran a bunch of demanding games on the laptop like Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2 and more.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested at a resolution of 1920 × 1200 using the High graphics preset, with scaling completely disabled, meaning no FSR. The game delivered an average of 52 FPS. However, by enabling Windows Automatic Super Resolution, or Auto SR for short, the game rendered internally at 1280 × 800 and upscaled to the 1200p display, boosting the average frame rate to 72 FPS.
These results were achieved while the laptop was in Performance Mode, pulling a sustained 45W TDP to maximize the Adreno X2 GPU's output. The YouTuber mentioned that using FSR 3.1 on the Balanced setting yielded even better performance than the OS-level scaling.
Next, the YouTuber tested Spider-Man 2 at 1200p Medium settings with IGTI scaling set to Balanced, where the game averaged between 40-50 FPS. With FSR Frame Generation turned on, the frame rate increased to around 70-80 FPS. However, the creator did not mention anything about ghosting, and the game also suffered from occasional stuttering.
Towards the end of the video, ETA Prime also tested Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1200p Medium settings with FSR set to Balanced, and the game ran well, averaging around 66 FPS in forest and indoor areas.
This short gaming test does give you a glimpse of the increased capabilities of the new Snapdragon X2 Elite chip. Also note that the chip variant tested here wasn't the fastest one, that would be Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100. Moreover, the YouTuber also mentioned that they will soon be testing an even more powerful variant of the X2 Elite chip.
You can see the full gaming test, as well as our full review of the Asus ZenBook A14, linked below.
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