is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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Last year, after well over a decade of trying, Qualcomm finally made Windows on Arm laptops a thing, putting both Intel and AMD on notice and shoving Intel out of consumer-grade Microsoft Surface machines. Today, we’re learning about the second generation of the chip that made it happen, one which’ll now come in two distinct flavors: the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme.
Qualcomm is making a gigantic claim right in the headline of its press release: it says these are “the fastest and most efficient processors for Windows PCs.” I’m sure Intel and AMD will have something to say about that!
From Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit video. Image: Qualcomm
But for now, the company claims its 3nm chips offer up to 31 percent faster CPU performance than the previous-gen Snapdragon X Elite at the same power, or can require 43 percent less power, and with up to 2.3x the GPU performance from a new 1.85GHz GPU. On the CPU side, it’s using a 3rd-gen Oryon CPU that’ll also feature in Qualcomm’s new mobile flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite 5 chip, but here with up to 18 cores, 12 of which can run up to 4.4GHz, or up to two of them at 5GHz — a clockspeed which Qualcomm says is a first for Arm CPUs.
You can see more specs below, and at Qualcomm’s website and overview PDF.
Image: Qualcomm
There’s also a new 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU, for AI tasks, that offers 37 percent more performance with a 16 percent power consumption improvement, and the company claims it’s the fastest laptop NPU by far:
Image: Qualcomm
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