Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme Benchmarks Show M4 Max-Like Performance For Windows

Qualcomm has taken the wraps off of its latest and greatest computing chips. After a relatively successful year with the launch of the Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite, the company has started rolling out its second-generation compute chips in the form of the new Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. Now, we have some more information about the chips — including benchmark results that show a chip that could take the competition to Apple.

Qualcomm flew me out to its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii to conduct benchmark tests on the new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme myself — and what I saw left me hopeful that we'll finally start getting much more powerful Windows machines that run on the ARM architecture. In fact, I'm hoping that the new thin-and-light form factors that these chips are designed for will outcompete Apple's offerings — not because I have anything against Apple (I use a MacBook Pro), but because I think it's high time there's actual competition in the space, rather than Apple simply dominating year over year. It'll push everyone forward. 

The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is the highest-end chip in the new X2 lineup, offering 18 cores, including 12 high-performing prime cores and six performance cores. Qualcomm touts the X2 Elite Extreme as offering a clock speed of up to 5.0GHz on up to two cores at once.

So, how did the new chip perform in benchmarks? Very well. The chip, in a reference design laptop built by Qualcomm, achieved a Geekbench 6 single-core score of up to 4,089, and a multi-core score of up to 23,786. In the 3DMark Solar Bay ray-tracing GPU test, the chip achieved up to 90.47 FPS, while in the Steel Nomad Light test, it hit 42.61 FPS.

Note, I'm saying it scored "up to" certain scores because the benchmark results were conducted a series of times, and the reference machines achieved a range of results. Generally, the lowest score it achieved was within 5% of its highest score. Unfortunately, I was unable to test other variants of the new X2 series, only the highest-end chip in the lineup.

These results are pretty impressive, and make a serious case for ARM-based chips on Windows machines. In fact, the results aren't just better than the Apple M4 -– they're often better than the M4 Pro. Typically, the M4 Max achieves similar single-core CPU results in GeekBench 6, though it does perform slightly better in multi-core tests. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme beats the M4 Pro in both single-core and multi-core performance, though it is close.

GPU performance is where Apple still has a solid lead, though. In the 3DMark Solar Bay GPU test, the M4 Max-equipped MacBook Pro can hit framerates of up to 250 FPS, while the M4 Pro model approaches 120 FPS. Qualcomm's chip still represents a big improvement over the last-gen Snapdragon X Elite though, which achieved a little over 40 FPS.

Interestingly, Qualcomm also has a pretty impressive lead in AI performance. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme's NPU allows it to hit GeekBench AI quantized scores of up to 88,919 — massively superior to the near-50,000 scores of the M4 Max-equipped MacBook Pro.

Benchmarks, of course, really don't give a complete picture of how a machine is going to perform. CPU performance is one thing, but AI performance is something else entirely, given the fact that plenty of machines run many AI tasks on the GPU instead of a dedicated NPU. That's not to mention the fact that macOS and Windows offer totally different AI features, and different levels of need for on-device AI processing.

Not only that, but the nature of Qualcomm's chips is that they'll be used by others. The reference machine is designed to give us an idea of how a chip might perform, but when manufacturers start building laptops and tablets with the chips, they'll include different cooling, different thermals, and different amounts of RAM.

All that to say, it's worth waiting until we get actual products with these new chips to say how they perform in real-world tests. By then, of course, Apple's M5 series may be available — though it remains to be seen if only the base M5 will be available or if variants like the M5 Pro, M5 Max, and even M5 Ultra are out too. Regardless, there's certainly hope for the Windows on ARM dream, and hopefully more ARM-based Windows machines will launch in the near future, with better battery lives and other helpful features.