Last week, Qualcomm revealed its bold strategy to launch the powerful Snapdragon X Elite CPU to take on AMD and Intel head-to-head in the PC market. Everyone was curious about the integrated GPU’s gaming performance because the specifications were a little vague. Thankfully, Qualcomm has subsequently granted permission for a team of journalists to test the chip in a variety of games, and the preliminary findings are encouraging.
Two laptops featuring the Elite X CPU were made available for restricted testing during a private event. A 15.6-inch 4K display and an 80W power limit for the new chip were present in one laptop, while a 14.5-inch 2800 x 1800 screen and a more sensible 23W CPU power limit were present in the other.
Anandtech and tech YouTuber Geekerwan were present, and between them, they offered insightful information on this new chip’s gaming capabilities. Unfortunately, there is still not enough information available on the GPU. A statistic of “up to 4.6 TFLOPS” has been supplied by Qualcomm to indicate its shading capacity; however, this figure is devoid of the necessary context to provide any significant insights. This number, assuming it applies to FP32 data values and does not include dual-issue optimization, would put the GPU’s performance in the ballpark of a GeForce GTX 1650 Super.
Although the specifics of the cache mechanism are yet unknown, both test laptops have LPDDR5X-8533 in terms of global memory bandwidth. This specific RAM kind is generally known for being among the fastest low-power memory choices for circuits such as the Elite X, thus the GPU will be adequately supported in this regard.
Considering that the AMD processor runs at a much lower power limit, the Elite X’s average performance of 44.8 frames per second (fps) is quite impressive. Anandtech’s evaluation of both laptops using 3DMark WildLife Extreme revealed that the 23W version achieved approximately 39 fps, which is a notably strong performance for its power envelope.
The recently released Snapdragon X Elite CPU from Qualcomm seems like a good option for the next wave of portable gaming PCs. Furthermore, its outstanding performance, especially at the 23W power level, raises the possibility that it might also power gaming-capable, thin, and light laptops. It’s still early days for this new contender, though, since Qualcomm’s willingness to engage in emulation support and driver development will be crucial to its success in the market.
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Bethany Wilson 
