Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux vs. AMD vs. Intel
In total I was able to run around 128 benchmarks for this initial comparison on the Acer Swift 14 AI with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-78-100 SoC). Out of all those benchmarks on a geo mean basis, here's the positioning among all the laptops tested on Ubuntu 25.04:
Besides all of the CPU tests run, in the various AArch64 native Vulkan tests, the Qualcomm Adreno X1-85 graphics on the Snapdragon X Elite were also well short of the integrated graphics on the latest AMD and Intel laptops.
Overall the Snapdragon X Elite within the Acer Swift 14 AI came out just ahead of the Core i7 1185G7 "Tiger Lake" laptop and similar to the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U. Well behind the very newest AMD Strix Point (Zen 5) and Intel Lunar Lake generation parts. The Snapdragon X Elite on Ubuntu 24.10 and Ubuntu 25.04 did have some nice wins in the Firefox browser performance, some creator applications, and other workloads that are well tuned for AArch64, but overall was very mixed.
👁 X Elite powered Acer Swift 14 AI with Ubuntu Linux 25.04
Granted, unfortunately I couldn't provide any CPU/SoC power consumption numbers on the Snapdragon X Elite due to the lack of such reporting under Linux right now. Hopefully SoC power reporting will be added to the upstream Linux kernel to really gauge the power efficiency / performance-per-Watt of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite against the AMD Ryzen and Intel Core (Ultra) competition.
For most of the workloads, the AMD Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" and Intel Lunar Lake processors were delivering much better performance and they have also advanced nicely for showing x86_64 power efficiency. Yes, the Snapdragon X Elite is nearly a one year old platform now but still not even fully working under Linux and thus who knows how long until the Linux support is in good shape for the Snapdragon X Elite 2 / X2 Elite or whatever the next-generation Snapdragon laptop SoCs will be called.
Due to all of the missing/not-yet-implemented features on the Acer Swift 14 AI and various other Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptops under Linux, it's really not suitable at all for daily use unless you are just a very lightweight web browser user and not caring about web camera, audio, etc. Plus the very hot thermals and at times powering off after extended periods of load is also a show-stopper for many. In any event it was an interesting initial experience with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite on Ubuntu Linux and fairly straight-forward. Hopefully by the time of the Ubuntu 25.10 or Ubuntu 26.04 LTS releases the ARM64 desktop image will be in much better shape.
At least the Snapdragon X Elite laptops on Linux makes more sense and long-term reliability thanks to involvement by Qualcomm and Linaro compared to the Apple Silicon efforts on Linux that are left up to the community and reverse-engineering. The Apple M3 and M4 still aren't supported on Linux yet and the M1/M2 have a number of limitations for their upstream support. So for those wanting to have an ARM Linux laptop, going the Snapdragon route may make more sense.
👁 Acer Swift 14 AI Snapdragon X Elite laptop
For those wanting a Linux laptop for reliable, daily use in mid-2025 I would hands-down recommend the Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 series (Strix Point) or if really wanting excellent build quality and very long battery life the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition powered by Intel Lunar Lake.
In any event stay tuned to Phoronix for more benchmarks and follow-up tests as the Snapdragon X Elite support continues to mature for Linux. Areas like looking at the x86_64 on AArch64 emulator performance are also being worked on and comparing to Windows 11 on ARM. As always, if you appreciate my relentless Linux hardware testing especially in cases when needing to buy hardware such as this Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptop for testing, consider joining Phoronix Premium.
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