Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme early tests beat out AMD, Intel, and Apple as the most powerful mobile chip on the market but price uncertainty still remains a sticking point

Just last week, we saw the announcement of Snapdragon's next range of chips, and this came with lofty claims. Qualcomm called it "Snapdragon's biggest advance in PC gaming", promising significantly more power per watt than Strix Point and Arrow Lake, as well as better GPU efficiency than Lunar Lake.

Tom's Hardware was invited out to test out both the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme chips recently, reporting test scores that look fittingly great.

These are early numbers from benchmarks prechosen by Qualcomm, so it won't paint the whole picture, but they're impressive nonetheless.

First off, in single-core CPU loads on Geekbench, the X2 Elite Extreme manages to get a score of 4080, which is 39% faster than the Snapdragon X Elite. Compared to the competition, the Strix Point AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 manages to get 2881, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H gets a score of 3026, and even Apple's M4 only got 3872.

Then in multi-core tests, the X2 Elite Extreme received a score of 23491, which is double that of the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V, which got 11306. The closest score of the suite to the X2 Elite Extreme is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, which managed to get 17680.

In 3DMark Solar Bay (a GPU test), the X2 Elite Extreme also manages to come out on top, beating the Strix Point chip by 61%. However, there are a few caveats to these scores. First, it's a specific suite of benchmarks being used in a specific laptop, chosen by Qualcomm.

The chip will be fine-tuned for these specific tests. Secondly, the X2 Elite (the cheaper of the two chips) is not in this set of tests, and the Apple M4 Max chip is not either, which is Apple's best chip right now. Strix Halo, with its large VRAM and impressive capabilities, is also missing.

Should you be interested, it also performs very well in preliminary AI tests, which suggests any laptop it's in will really feel like an 'AI PC'. Both Procyon AI computer vision scores and Geekbench AI 1.5 scores are higher than the competition, with the HX 370 sitting out of the latter test as the chip can't run it.

We don't yet have a price point or battery life tests, but these will be some of the most important when contextualising the figures earned by the X2 Elite Extreme. There's no point shoving a bunch of power into a chip if it becomes unfeasible to buy or use it. Here's looking at you, companies trying to cram Strix Halo into handhelds.

Speaking to Tom's Hardware, a representative of Qualcomm said the X2 Elite Extreme would come in at a higher price point than last year's X chips, which suggests devices with the chip in it will cost more than $1,000. The standard X2 Elite chip will naturally be cheaper, but we know very little about that so far, from price to performance. More competition is always good, and these early tests look very positive, though I don't know if I'm excited by the potential of yet more $1,000+ gaming handhelds.

Best handheld PC 2025

1. Best overall:
Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS ed.

2. Best budget:
Steam Deck

3. Best Windows:
MSI Claw 8 AI+

4. Best big screen:
Lenovo Legion Go

5. Best compact:
Ayaneo Flip DS

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