The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 may be the best new chipset in the Android realm, but Qualcomm is also establishing itself on the PC side with its X Elite series chips. The Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme are the latest chipsets for Windows on Arm machines and they bring sizeable gains in performance and efficiency over the first-gen Snapdragon X Elite models.
The new X2 series consists of three chips – the X2 Elite (X2E-80-100) with a 12-core CPU, the X2 Elite (X2E-88-100) with an 18-core CPU and the X2 Elite Extreme (X2E-96-100), which also sports 18 CPU cores. All three new chips are fabbed on TSMC’s 3 nm process.
Qualcomm claims the X2 Elite Extreme is built for ultra-premium Windows 11 PCs that tackle “expert-level workloads”, while the regular X2 Elite is for premium PCs across “resource-intensive workloads”. Qualcomm also claims “multi-day battery life” for its new chips.
All three X2 Elite SoCs feature the third-generation Qualcomm Oryon CPUs, just like the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, but with up to 18 CPU cores on the X2 Elite Extreme.
Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme
Snapdragon X2 Elite (88)
Snapdragon X2 Elite (80)
Model Number
X2E-96-100
X2E-88-100
X2E-80-100
CPU Cores (total)
18
18
12
Prime Cores
12
12
6
Multi-Core Max Frequency
4.4 GHz
4.0 GHz
4.0 GHz
Boost Frequency
5.0 GHz Single-Core / 5.0 GHz Dual-Core
4.7 GHz Single-Core / 4.7 GHz Dual-Core
4.7 GHz Single-Core / 4.4 GHz Dual-Core
Performance Cores
6
6
6
Performance Cores Max Frequency
3.6 GHz
3.4 GHz
3.4 GHz
Total Cache
53 MB
53 MB
34 MB
GPU Part Number
X2-90
X2-90
X2-85
GPU Max Frequency
1.85 GHz
1.70 GHz
1.70 GHz
NPU
80 TOPS (INT8)
80 TOPS (INT8)
80 TOPS (INT8)
RAM
LPDDR5x
LPDDR5x
LPDDR5x
Bus Width
192-bit
128-bit
128-bit
Bandwidth
228 GB/s
152 GB/s
152 GB/s
The baseline X2 Elite chip gets 6x performance CPU cores clocked at 3.4GHz and 6x prime cores at 4.0GHz that boost up to 4.7GHz. The 18-core version of the X2 Elite features 12 prime cores and 6 performance cores, split with the same max clock speeds.
The X2 Elite Extreme gets faster 4.4GHz clock speeds on the prime cores, which boost up to 5.0GHz and up to 3.6GHz on the performance core side.
Qualcomm is claiming 31% faster CPU performance at ISO power and 43% less power draw than the previous generation of X Elite chips.
The X2 Elite chips feature an upgraded Adreno GPU, which Qualcomm claims will offer a 2.3X increase in performance per watt and power efficiency compared to the first-gen Snapdragon X Elite chips. You also get DirectX 12.2 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenCL 3.0 support.
The new chips get Qualcomm’s latest Hexagon NPU with 80 TOPS of AI processing, which Qualcomm claims is the world’s fastest NPU for laptops. All three X2 Elite chips support LPDDR5X RAM, UFS 4.0 storage and feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Guardian Technology for remote manageability.
The first laptops with the X2 Elite chips are expected to launch in Spring 2026.
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