Qualcomm's team seems to be in the final development stages of its second-generation Snapdragon X processors for client PCs, and it looks like it is about time for the first leaks about the CPU performance to emerge. This week, a Chinese blogger said that the next-generation Snapdragon X will increase performance by 18-22% compared to the existing Snapdragon X processors, but there are some catches about this claim. The main one is that we are dealing with unofficial information that should be taken with a grain of salt.
"Hearing that the second-generation Nuvia is expected to start at 4.40 GHz," wrote Focused Digital, a Chinese blogger with 2.227 million followers (via @Jukanlosreve). "Performance is estimated to improve by 18% – 22%."
Max multi-threaded frequency of PC-oriented Snapdragon X processors with Oryon cores developed by the Nuvia team made on TSMC's N4P process technology (4nm-class) varies from 3.0 GHz to 3.80 GHz, whereas their boost clocks vary from 4.0 GHz to 4.30 GHz.
We do not know which process technology will be used by Qualcomm's second-generation Snapdragon X CPUs, though a roughly 20% generation-to-generation performance increase looks reasonable if we are looking at a CPU due in 2025. That said, we can only wonder whether the increase is enabled by higher clocks or microarchitectural improvements. If we are talking about processors that are due in 2026 (based on a Dell roadmap that was obtained unofficially) that will compete against 2026 processors, a 20% overall performance increase may not be sufficient to stay competitive.
The information about the performance of Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon X processors for PCs comes from a Chinese blogger who presumably obtains information from the PC supply chain, and given the number of followers, we may expect this information to be more or less accurate. The post was reposted by a South Korean blogger, who has access to data from Korean financial analysts and who, for some reason, also thinks that the information has merit.
Qualcomm released its first Snapdragon X Elite processors for PCs (model number SC8380XP) in mid-2024 and reportedly initiated internal testing of its second-generation Snapdragon X Elite processors (model number SC8480XP) in September, 2024. At that time, we did not hear anything about performance estimates of the CPU, but as of now, it's looking like the new processors will offer an 18–22% higher performance than their predecessors.
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Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer
Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
14 CommentsComment from the forums
IBM296 That is quite a pathetic increase for a chip releasing almost 2 years after its predecessor.
If Qualcomm wants to stay competitive with Apple's M5 and AMD chips, it needs atleast a 40% increase in performance.
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Notton There is a stark contrast between Qualcomm on Android and Windows
For instance, the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 gets raving reviews. It's well equipped at a competitive price for performance.
Where as Snapdragon X Elite laptops were largely panned as being too expensive, slow, without much improvement in battery life and pricey.Specs wise, the X Elite should blast the 8 Gen 3 out of the water in CPU, and roughly equal in GPU. And yet...
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bit_user Just please tell me it has SVE2!
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bit_user IBM296 said:
That is quite a pathetic increase for a chip releasing almost 2 years after its predecessor.Kinda depends whether they're talking IPC, single-threaded, or multi-threaded performance. If it's MT, then it's pretty terrible. On the other hand, if that's just the IPC improvement, it's quite decent.
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xc68000 If they don't figure out a way to add a discrete gpu or significantly increase the gpu core count, these systems are never going to gain traction.
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Notton xc68000 said:
If they don't figure out a way to add a discrete gpu or significantly increase the gpu core count, these systems are never going to gain traction.The X Elite supposedly has 12x PCIe 4.0 lanes. (Qualcomm decided not to make this info open for some reason.)
And it has the ports to connect with an eGPU.
So it's not like the chip can't interface with a GPU.The problem is there are zero graphics drivers for ARM on Windows.
As for the iGPU, it's supposedly based on the Adreno 730.
Qualcomm still has some tricks up their sleeves with regards to iGPU.
In particular, the Adreno 750 has similar performance to an Radeon 880M.Reply
Alvar "Miles" Udell But can it run Crysis (or every x86 program for that matter)?
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Pierce2623 bit_user said:
Just please tell me it has SVE2!If I was ARM, I’d totally stop doing business with Qualcomm.
Alvar Miles Udell said:
But can it run Crysis (or every x86 program for that matter)?Through emulation, sure. I was playing the x86 version of Dark Souls remastered on a sd8gen2 earlier today.
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Mr Majestyk It's technically 3rd gen. 2nd gen is for flagship mobile devices.
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bit_user Pierce2623 said:
If I was ARM, I’d totally stop doing business with Qualcomm.Qualcomm pays them money, which ARM needs. It really can't afford to shut them out, right now.
Anyway, shutting them out would be a spiteful decision, not something based on logic or in the interest of shareholders.
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