Qualcomm flew me and a bunch of other journalists out to Maui for its Snapdragon Summit last week, where it unveiled its Snapdragon X2 Elite family of chips. The SoCs are set to arrive early next year in next-gen laptops, and we got a chance to benchmark the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme.

Let's just say that I'm pretty excited about it.

The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme has 18 Oryon v3 cores, with the top couple of prime cores maxing out at 5GHz. On top of that, it's got integrated memory, a GPU that's almost twice as powerful as its predecessor, and an 80 TOPS NPU.

Some caveats and specs

Nothing will replace the real thing

Before we go any further, I want to be clear that any benchmark scores you're about to see mean very little when it comes to the real world. These are benchmarks on Qualcomm Reference Designs, which we actually know little about, such as what the TDP was.

Normally, Snapdragon benchmarking sessions come with a printout that includes the entire spec sheet for the units, but that wasn't the case this time. There was a sign that said the machines have 48GB RAM, 1TB "storage", and a 16-inch display.

The point is, real-world results can and will vary.

Of course, this is still super exciting. It's our first taste of the next generation of laptop chips, and since we have more competition in the space than ever before, it's going to be fun to put these side-by-side.

Also, I didn't actually run the benchmarks. I just sort of watched them being run, and took pictures of them.

There's one other big caveat. Like I said earlier, Qualcomm flew us to Hawaii for this, and I took a few days on the end of it for vacation, which means I'm writing this at my hotel; it also means I don't have access to my own hardware to run tests that I haven't run before or haven't recorded. If that's the case, I'll use Qualcomm quotes, but they'll be marked as the name of the CPU instead of a specific laptop.

The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme beats the competition

Even Apple, at least for now

A fan-favorite for keeping score on CPUs is Geekbench 6, so we can start off with that. But you should know, Geekbench is just that, a CPU test. There's a lot more on the package than just a CPU, so this isn't looking at graphics or NPU performance.

Geekbench 6

This is huge. It's the first time I've seen a 4,000+ single-core score, although that should be obvious given the comparisons. Most of what we saw on the Windows market was ~2,800, with the lower-tier Snapdragon X Elite, the X1E-78-100 (side note, those last three digits are all 100 again, and I couldn't get an answer for what that even means) was closer to 2,400.

Of course, some people say single-core doesn't even matter anymore, which isn't entirely true but there's a bit of merit to it. 23,362 beats the current class of laptop chips, although it has more competition on the desktop end.

Cinebench 2024

Like Geekbench, Cinebench is a CPU test. It runs differently, but the results are usually similar.

Once again, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme shows impressive gains over both single-core and multi-core scores from competitors. It's pretty huge.

Again, to be clear, this is a next-gen chip and we're comparing it to last-gen chips. Intel and AMD will have their own announcements, and we'll see how this stacks up when that happens. Still, this is a sizable jump.

3DMark

3DMark is where things get even more interesting, because while Snapdragon X Elite was a strong contender for CPU power and battery life, it didn't win any awards for GPU power. Like the company has been saying since 2017, there's nothing stopping an OEM from strapping a dedicated GPU into one of these things, but you wouldn't want to.

Integrated graphics have long been important, and in the age of Apple Silicon, it's even more so. No one is asking for dedicated graphics on a MacBook, so it's on Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm to compete with that.

There's a huge increase in scores in both Solar Bay and Steel Nomad Light tests from 3DMark. These scores factor both the CPU and the GPU, but an increase is what you want to see, obviously.

Those were the only two 3DMark tests running on the benchmarking demos, and they're not tests I typically run in my own benchmarking, so all I can compare is to is the Surface Laptop 7 I have with me. Usually, I run the regular Steel Nomad test, along with Time Spy, Wild Life, and Night Raid.

Still, the score is definitely competitive. I'll update this article with Intel and AMD numbers when I have them.

Geekbench AI

Qualcomm went really hard with this generation, so on top of meaningful improvements on the CPU and GPU, there's also an 80 TOPS NPU. Again, it's a huge leap.

As I mentioned, I don't have any Apple, Intel, or AMD laptops with me to test, so for Geekbench AI, the M4 and Core Ultra 9 scores are what's provided by Qualcomm.

What's really interesting about the new NPU is that I don't think Intel is going to be competitive here when it announces its next generation of chips, and I'm not sure how it impacts the market. Intel still powers the majority of laptops sold, even if it's losing ground, so it does hold some power in the industry. Microsoft seems to be committed to Qualcomm though, with Snapdragon chips powering all Surface products that aren't aimed squarely at businesses.

2026 is going to be pretty exciting

I think that Qualcomm has a real winner with the Snapdragon X2 Elite family, even if these benchmarks are run on hardware with mysterious specs or whatever. There's no doubting the significant gains we're seeing across the CPU, GPU, and NPU, and they're all ahead of the typical curve that we see gen-over-gen.

Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops are going to be announced at CES, as will next-gen laptops that are powered by competitors like Intel, AMD, and anyone else. As is always the case around new CPU time, it's going to be fun.