Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon X2 Plus, with up to 35% more single-core CPU performance and 29% faster GPUs than X Plus chips
After the modest success of its first generation of Arm-based Snapdragon X processors, as part of Microsoft's Copilot+ AI PC ecosystem, Qualcomm continued to improve the architecture by launching the Snapdragon X2 Elite last September. And at this year's CES event, it's back again, this time with the more affordable X2 Plus range.
It's worth noting right away that the new X2 Plus chips don't appear to be a fresh design. In the same way that an Intel Core Ultra 5 265K is simply a Core Ultra 9 285K with various cores and cache disabled, the Snapdragon X2 Plus processors just seem to be X2 Elite models with a whole host of stuff switched off.
Prime cores | Performance cores | Multi-core max clock (Prime/Perf) | Boost clock | CPU total cache | GPU cores | GPU clock | RAM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Snapdragon X2 Plus (X2P-64-100) | 6 | 4 | 4.0 / 3.4 GHz | 4.04 GHz | 34 MB | 1024? | 1.7 GHz | LPDDR5x-9523 |
Snapdragon X2 Plus (X2P-42-100) | 6 | 0 | 4.0 GHz | 4.04 GHz | 22 MB | 1024? | 0.9 GHz | LPDDR5x-9523 |
Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-64-100) | 10 | 0 | 3.4 GHz | 4.0 GHz | 42 MB | 1536 | 1.2 GHz | LPDDR5x-8448 |
Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-42-100) | 8 | 0 | 3.2 GHz | 3.4 GHz | 30 MB | 768 | 1.1 GHz | LPDDR5x-8448 |
But that doesn't mean they're not worth considering. Even if Qualcomm's performance claims are very optimistic, a CPU single-core uplift of 35% is nothing to be sniffed at. This increase comes about through clock speeds and architectural changes, even though some specifications have actually decreased in the generational increment.
So how can these processors be so much better than their predecessors? It's certainly not clock speeds, because they're either the same or, at best, they're only 18% higher. The devil is in the details, because X2 Prime cores are substantially more potent than X cores. Each pipeline has only slightly wider stages, but there are now twice as many branch units.
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There is a raft of minor tweaks across the rest of the integer and floating point pipelines, as well as the memory subsystem. Paired with faster system RAM, it's not hard to see that it all adds up. Probably not to 35% in real-world scenarios, but specialised single-core benchmarks will probably reflect this claim.
Qualcomm also notes that the Snapdragon X2 Plus consumes up to 43% less power than the X Plus, and that's almost certainly down to the internal changes, especially the Performance cores, and the fact that the chips are being manufactured on TSMC's N3P process node (previous models used N4).
On the point of the Performance cores, Qualcomm's choice of terminology is an odd one, because unlike Intel, these aren't the most capable cores in the chip. In fact, they're considerably less potent than the Prime cores, but they are designed to work better at very low power levels.
When it comes to the Snapdragon X's GPU, Qualcomm has always been somewhat shy about passing on pertinent details. Both of the new X2 Plus models sport the same X2-45 graphics processor, but exactly how many shaders it has isn't clear. The Snapdragon X2 Elite has 2048 shaders in its X2-90 GPU, so my estimate of 1024 for X2 Plus chips seems reasonable enough.
Qualcomm's latest Adreno GPUs are fully compliant with DirectX 12 and Vulkan, and have dedicated hardware for ray tracing, including BVH traversal acceleration. There's also around 11 MB of specialised cache like AMD's Infinity Cache (assuming the X2-45 is literally half an X2-90), which can be used as a dedicated cache to reduce DRAM traffic and as a scratchpad for the shaders to store temporary data.
I make particular note of the X2 Plus' GPU because, to my eyes, this could be an ideal APU for handheld gaming PCs. Qualcomm doesn't state any specification power limits for its chips, leaving it up to hardware vendors to set the appropriate levels, but I've seen various claims that the new X2 models are designed to operate in a 10 to 20 W power window.
If that's the case, then these really could be a serious contender to AMD's hold over the portable PC market. Then again, Intel's new Core Ultra 300 chips (aka Panther Lake) are looking very good, but this is actually a good thing. More competition is what the industry needs right now, and while Qualcomm's offerings barely made any impact on Intel's near-monopoly of the laptop sector, it could be a very different situation when it comes to handhelds.
However, despite announcing them back in September 2025, we've yet to see any device sport a Snapdragon X2 Elite processor. Hopefully, things will improve this year, though the DRAM crisis might delay product launches even more.