When Qualcomm released its first batch of ARM-based Snapdragon X processors two years ago, they worked well enough, but failed to set the PC gaming world on fire. It's not really what they were meant for, and if decades of buying computer parts have taught me one thing, it's never to buy into the first generation of a new product. I still do it, of course, as the Oculus Rift sitting unloved in its box shows, but I'm always left with the feeling that I should know better.
The main downside of the OG Snapdragon, once software compatibility issues were smoothed out, was its GPU. The Adreno cores buried somewhere in the chipset felt underpowered for anything heavier than Stardew Valley, and while DirectX and Vulcan compatibility was high, and driver updates refined the process, some games just didn't work.
With the release of the Snapdragon X2, a few things have changed. The main one is that the CPU package now comes with a lot more processing cores—18 on the Elite Extreme model we've got here—but the GPU is also a lot better. It's now putting out the sort of benchmark results you'd expect from Intel iGPUs, and in some tests can even produce better results than Panther Lake.
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