(Credit: John Burek/PCMag)
Qualcomm claims that its next-generation Adreno X2 GPU in the Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC will offer gaming performance that's 50% greater than that of the Xe2 GPUs in Intel's Core Ultra 200 range of processors. It also claims to be almost 30% faster than the best AMD Ryzen AI CPUs for onboard graphics gaming.
As VideoCardz notes, those are first-party numbers, but if they prove even remotely accurate, the X2 series of chips may be particularly exciting for indie and esports gaming.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus SoCs finally made Windows on Arm possible, with strong performance and even stronger battery life. It gave Intel and AMD a kick to improve their energy efficiency, and helped make (non-MacBook) laptops with battery life that tops 20 hours far more commonplace. However, we're now looking to the future, and Qualcomm claims the next generation will be graphical powerhouses, which we've seen hints of in early tests.
In a new architectural deep dive of its Adreno X2 GPU, Qualcomm highlights its major redesign to boost rasterization performance, with hardware-accelerated ray-tracing units powering fancy new lighting effects. There's 21MB of high-performance, on-chip memory, enhanced cache structures, and support for faster LPDDR5X memory.
All of this delivers an average 2.3x increase in overall frames per second compared with the last generation, Qualcomm claims. When pitting the X2 Elite Extreme (the very flagship version of the SoC) with Intel's Core Ultra 9 288V with its eight Xe2 cores, the Snapdragon chip performs on average 50% faster, and in some cases, over twice as fast.
Going up against AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, which features an AMD 890M GPU with 16 Compute Units, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is reportedly able to deliver 29% higher frame rates on average, with up to 50% more in some cases.
The tests were spread across a wide range of games, from super-demanding titles like Black Myth: Wukong to older games like Borderlands 3 and esports favorites like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2. All tests were conducted at 1080p medium quality, though crucially with no upscaling. Snapdragon X chips support AMD's FSR technology, so it will be possible to boost FPS even further with the new SoC in compatible games.
For future feature support and ongoing optimizations, Qualcomm is committing to a consistent driver update schedule for Adreno X2 GPUs and is introducing a new Snapdragon control panel, which will let you make adjustments to the GPU, optimize game settings, and provide easy driver updates—much like AMD and Nvidia's graphics platforms do.
Although compatibility is never guaranteed with games and ARM hardware, Qualcomm claims over 90% of the most played games will be compatible with the X2 chips at launch, with native driver support for DirectX 12.2 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenCL.
Take it all with a grain of salt, as we'll need to test these chips ourselves before we deliver a verdict. However, if Qualcomm's numbers are anything to go by, the next generation of lightweight laptops could offer strong gaming capabilities and battery life in a single package.