Qualcomm Snapdragon X vs. Snapdragon X2: What’s Changed?

Qualcomm’s latest foray into personal computer system-on-chip designs, the Snapdragon X family, has been with us for more than a year now. It started with a small handful of Snapdragon X Elite chips and a single X Plus model, later expanding to nine different chips in the line.

The chipmaker is now releasing the second generation, the Snapdragon X2. With the first-gen chipsets, we were treated to laptops with long battery life and performance that exceeded expectations. (The Asus Zenbook A14, HP Omnibook X 14 and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 are great examples of what’s possible.) Products with the new chips will start shipping in 2026, but for now, here’s what we know about how they compare to the existing Snapdragon X chips.

Like the prior generation, just the upper end of the Snapdragon X2 family will be available at first. Some of the differences between the X2 and the original generation are immediately apparent.

Where the Snapdragon X line had CPUs consisting of eight to 12 identical cores, the Snapdragon X2 family opts for a hybrid architecture that combines two different core types. Qualcomm calls them Prime and Performance cores. We’ve seen similar designs in Qualcomm’s phone chips for years. Intel has also used a similar approach with the Performance Hybrid architecture introduced in the 12th-gen Intel Core chips.

This type of architecture aims to keep the faster Prime cores working on demanding tasks while letting lighter workloads and background tasks use the lower-power cores. Qualcomm’s naming scheme here seems to be an attempt to make it clear that even its more efficient cores are still delivering high performance, hence the name. Just how well the different Snapdragon X2 Oryon Prime and Performance cores will stack up against the uniform Oryon cores in the first-generation chips remains to be seen.

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However, during the launch keynote, Qualcomm suggested there would be a considerable performance leap to the X2. It says the new cores can deliver 39% more single-core performance and, to deliver the same amount of performance as the first-generation cores at their peak, the new cores would require 43% less power. That efficiency jump is likely thanks to the shift from 4nm to 3nm process nodes. For the 18-core Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100, Qualcomm is promising just a 50% increase in multithreaded performance over the last generation, though, which is curious given the chip also has a 50% increase in CPU cores.

While the first-generation Snapdragon X chips had just one CPU core type, the X2 lineup’s Oryon Prime cores come with substantial boosts for max multithread and dual-core frequencies. For reference, the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 could reach a 3.8 gigahertz all-core clock speed and 4.2GHz dual-core boost. The top-of-the-line Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100 will reportedly reach 4.4GHz for its prime cores and a 5GHz dual-core boost.

The new chips also shift the total cache. At the upper end, the new Snapdragon X2 chips will get more total cache, 53 megabytes compared to the previous gen’s 42, though that’s not an across-the-board increase. The Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-80-100, for example, gets just 34MB of cache while the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 had 42MB.

Graphics, AI and memory

Alongside the CPU upgrades, Qualcomm is making changes to the onboard graphics, NPU and memory. The new chips will feature upgraded Adreno GPUs, though Qualcomm hasn’t shared much detail on their exact performance. We know the new GPUs will have clock speeds ranging from 1.7 to 1.85GHz, considerably higher than the 1.5GHz peak on GPUs of the first generation. On the top-spec Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100, Qualcomm says the new GPU delivers 2.3 times the peak performance of its predecessor.

With game benchmarks, Qualcomm showed the new GPUs offering 1.6 to 2.2 times the performance in games like GTA 5, Cyberpunk 2077 and Hitman: World of Assassination. The new GPUs will also support newer graphics APIs with the DirectX 12.2 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4 and OpenCL 3.0 standards.

The Hexagon NPU is also upgraded, with a promised 80 TOPS of INT8 compute speeds, up from 45 TOPS in the first generation. Qualcomm demonstrated this by achieving a 4,151-point score in the Procyon AI Computer Vision Benchmark, which is more than double the scores we’ve seen from systems running the first-gen Snapdragon X chips like the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 4771, Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7.

Even the memory is getting a bump. The new chips will still use LPDDR5x, but with a boosted transfer rate up to 9,523 megatransfers per second. This boosts the bandwidth compared to the first-generation chips, which were a bit above 135 gigabits per second, to 152Gbps. With the wider 192-bit memory bus of the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, which jumps to 228Gbps.

Some extra tech and some of the same

There are a few other upgrades in store, like the move to PCIe Gen 5.0, plus a bump to an embedded DisplayPort 1.5 for 4K/144Hz support on connected displays (24Hz faster than before) and support for three 5K/60Hz external displays (up from two). Snapdragon Guardian is also new for remote management.

A lot remains the same, though. The SoCs will still support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 via the FastConnect 7800 system, and there will be support for three USB4 connections. The X2 chips get a new Snapdragon X75 5G modem, though it doesn’t change the 10Gbps peak download or 3.5Gbps peak upload speeds. Oddly, the max single-camera resolution for the new chips drops to 36 megapixels, down from the 64 of the prior generation.

Ultimately, the Snapdragon X2 lineup appears to be shaping up to be a potent follow-up to the first generation. They may not be quite the revolution that Apple’s M1 chips were, but the extra performance never hurts, especially if it can help make up for some of the hits Snapdragon chips take in x86 emulation. What will be exciting to see is how the extra efficiency translates into longer battery life or thinner, lighter hardware designs. Alas, we’ll be waiting until 2026 to see consumer devices with the new hardware.