Qualcomm’s most powerful CPU ever will target AMD’s Ryzen AI+ 395 with 128GB onboard LPDDR5X memory – while Intel has only 32GB integrated memory to contend with
- Qualcomm’s new X2 Elite Extreme has 18 cores, 5.0GHz boost and 128GB LPDDR5X RAM
- X2 Elite has 12 cores, 4.7GHz boost and the same memory at lower bandwidth
- Both chips add Adreno GPUs with ray tracing, and multi display support
Qualcomm has taken the wraps off its latest processors for Windows notebooks and PCs.
The Snapdragon X2 Elite and the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme are set to compete with AMD‘s Ryzen AI+ 395 and offer a significant boost over previous generation chips.
The X2 Elite Extreme is the flagship version, with higher core counts, faster clock speeds and stronger AI performance than the standard Elite model.
Boost to 5.0GHz
The chip features up to 18 Oryon CPU cores, with 12 prime and 6 performance cores built on TSMC’s 3nm process.
Two of the prime cores can boost to 5.0GHz, making it the first Arm-based consumer processor to hit that speed.
The chip supports up to 128GB of LPDDR5X-9523 memory with 228GB/s bandwidth and 53MB of cache.
In comparison, the standard X2 Elite has up to 12 cores on TSMC’s 4nm process.
It supports the same 128GB memory capacity but at lower bandwidth, and its peak boost is 4.7GHz on one core. Cache is reduced to 34MB.
AI processing is another area of difference. The Extreme’s NPU delivers up to 80 TOPS, nearly double the 45 TOPS of the X2 Elite.
Qualcomm says this level of acceleration is designed for Copilot+ PCs, allowing multiple AI workloads to run on-device at the same time.
Graphics performance also gets an upgrade. The Extreme has the Adreno X2-90 GPU, while it’s Adreno X2-85 for the Elite.
Both add hardware-based ray tracing for the first time and support for DirectX 12.2 Ultimate, Vulkan and OpenCL 3.0.
The chips can drive up to three 4K external displays at 144Hz or two 5K monitors at 60Hz, and connectivity includes Wi-Fi 7 via FastConnect 7800 and optional 5G with the Snapdragon X75 modem, with I/O packing PCIe 5.0 on the Extreme, PCIe 4.0 on the Elite, plus NVMe SSDs, UFS 4.0 and multiple USB4 ports.
The first notebooks featuring Qualcomm’s new X2 Elite and Elite Extreme chips are set to arrive in the first half of 2026 – and the first benchmarks for the new chips are expected soon.
