PC gaming has become Qualcomm’s white whale. The company wouldn’t put it in those terms, but it’s clear the company wants users to know its new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip will be gaming capable. It’s far from the ideal, and Qualcomm seems to know it. It wants to show off the new chip’s GPU abilities, but for one of the most common uses of graphics processing, Qualcomm will still be behind everyone else.
The looming elephant in the room is the chip microarchitecture Qualcomm is beholden to. Whereas Intel and AMD use x86, Snapdragon is based on ARM. Whatever PC you buy with a Snapdragon X2 chip will run into game compatibility issues. While Qualcomm claims it has 1,400 games optimized for Snapdragon, the actual list of modern AAA titles is relatively small. During its Snapdragon Summit keynote in Hawaii (full disclosure: travel and lodging were paid by Qualcomm, and Gizmodo did not guarantee any coverage as a condition of accepting the trip), the chipmaker showed off a list of games compatible with the platform. This included a few relatively recent games, such as Baldur’s Gate III and Hogwarts Legacy, plus a heap of 10-year-old games and remasters. You won’t port your entire Steam library to these new PCs whenever they come along. If you’re feeling a bit of déjà vu, that’s because Apple’s been suffering from the same incompatibility issues with its ARM-based M-series chips. If you’re being compared to Apple in terms of gaming, you’re already in a rough spot.
A great GPU that can’t play all your games
Qualcomm’s chief of mobile and compute, Alex Katouzian, said in a Q&A, “[Gaming on PC] is moving slower than we want.” The 20-year Qualcomm veteran reiterated the anti-cheat compatibility with the original Snapdragon X series, which essentially locked out many of the most popular multiplayer games from its PCs.
“You have to chisel away at that until the game developer or the engine developer who actually works with us on mobile realizes we have the same capabilities coming through on PC,” he said.
Back with the first-gen Snapdragon X launch, Qualcomm made sure to tell buyers these devices were not built for gaming. The messaging has changed. Now they’re good for “casual gaming.” The new top-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme PC chip boasts enhanced CPU cores and an upgraded GPU, promising to beat the competition. Qualcomm claims the GPU can top out at higher performance, while drawing less power than either AMD or Intel’s high-end laptop chips.
Kedar Kondap, Qualcomm’s senior vice president and general manager of compute and gaming, told media that new devices running Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme could hit around 60 fps in some compatible games, whereas the Snapdragon X could only get 30 fps. And still, “We’re very cautious about how we position these devices in the market; they are not gaming platforms.”
Qualcomm can cajole and entice developers to port their games to ARM. It managed to convince Epic Games to enable compatibility with the game’s anti-cheat. The only other option is with emulation or a full compatibility layer. Currently, Windows on ARM depends on Microsoft’s Prism emulator, which simulates the x86 hardware as software. This leads to performance hiccups that make playing unsupported games less than ideal. Katouzian reiterated it was sticking with Prism for the sake of emulation. However, multiple rumors suggest Valve is porting games to ARM for the sake of a supposed standalone VR headset. Qualcomm could ride on Valve’s coattails and make a handy sum off the maker of Steam. If they’re considering it, Qualcomm isn’t yet saying so.
We still have to see what next-gen chips Intel and AMD carve out for tomorrow’s laptops. Qualcomm has promised that by “early next year” we’ll have the opportunity to test devices with the Snapdragon X2 Elite. Which is to say, by CES 2026 we’ll probably have a slew of new Intel, Qualcomm—and perhaps AMD—devices to compare each other to. The other two major PC chipmakers will still try to push battery life and power efficiency just like they did last year, just like Qualcomm is doing now.
Qualcomm has an odd place in gaming
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