Qualcomm unveil the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, the fastest and most efficient processors for Windows PCs

New Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme and Snapdragon X2 Elite are the Fastest and Most Efficient Processors for Windows PCs | Qualcomm
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www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2025/09/new-snap…

*According to Qualcomm

Third times the charm. Qualcomm messed up the last time they tried to make an ARM chip for computers, but this time Im more optimistic. The specs look amazing on paper

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Great, now make them able to work with Linux!

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for Windows PCs

“Whoa! This Is Worthless”

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Its the future of Windows, it allows Microsoft to have more control over the hardware. You will own nothing.

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Until they open up the software, these are doomed to operate in obscurity.

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Too bad software still doesn’t exist in Windows on ARM. Linux on ARM, and no, Android doesn’t count as Google’s trying to lock it down and seemingly at minimum castrate AOSP, has software but Qualcomm will probably never support Linux.

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Uhhhh, not sure what you mean about Linux and ARM. That’s very much a thing.

Windows is a different story because cross-compilation with the OS libs and utils is necessary, and Microsoft does not push that.

Running everything in compat mode with translators is kind of defeating the purpose. The way this gets more adoption is Qualcomm OPENING THE FUCKING INTERFACES TO EVERYONE, which they are notoriously against doing. They want everyone to pay a license for fucking everything. So stupid.

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My wording might have sucked, but yeah, Linux on ARM has plenty of software, excluding Android.

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I don’t know that this is as true as it used to be. For my standard office-centric use case it’s fine. I just need Dropbox and the office suite. But a lot of windows software has ARM versions now. The only thing holding me back is the lack of an ARM Surface Go.

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I wish decently powerful small laptops would make a return. I dearly love my 11” MacBook Air and I’m still astounded I can even somewhat use it today for various research and office work, but it could seriously do with an M1 chip and 16GB of memory.

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I have a Dell XPS 13 9315, which is roughly the same size as the 11” air (actually slightly smaller), and I absolutely adore it. I didn’t get the highest-end because I didn’t need it, but it’s available with some decent processors and up to 32Gb RAM. It just sucks that everything is soldered to the board and non-upgradeable, and it has only 2 USB C ports, but that’s the price you pay for the size. The battery life is actually astounding, too, I am constantly amazed how long it lasts. The new XPS13 has the weird square flat keys and no border around the touchpad, I’m really glad I got the model I did because the new ones look like a pain to actually use.

Like I can actually do a little bit of light Solidworks on it if I’m not near my desktop, which blew me away. It plays the indie games I like, too, so it basically just does everything I need.

My winter project is to install Linux on it and get it all working the way I want.

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I’d like to see decently small powerful laptops that can actually be upgraded, ala old-school Thinkpad X-series from before Lenovo ruined the ThinkPad name.

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Yes, while I have the MBA running macOS, I have my trusty X260 with Linux for everything I don’t need macOS for. I absolutely love both the size and thickness of it - the keyboard is good, the nub is good, it’s a comfortable, rugged laptop with a dual battery setup.

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It’s hilarious Qualcomm keeps claiming this is their tech. They failed for years to make ARM on pc happen. Then some engineers leave Apple after the transition to M-series chips and make their own equivalent for PCs and Qualcomm, on contract with Microsoft to deliver an ARM chip for windows-powered portables just fucking buys them and slaps their branding on it.
There is a HUGE difference between the X series Qualcomm chip and their previous SQ-series science fair trash. The X series are good chips. Their Linux support is lacking but for most users who wouldn’t consider leaving windows even if it gave them cancer these are perfectly fine chips.
We need more diversity in the chip market and ARM is great for that. Qualcomm sucks is all.

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I don’t trust Microsoft to make apps on their OS work as well as on x86. Their support so far with X elite/pro chips was very telling.

Credit where credit is due, Apple worked hard with other developers to make the transition to ARM possible. Microsoft doesn’t seem to be bothered to do that much.

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Compatibility improved a lot since release, you can actually run most apps and games on an X elite now

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Almost do most things you could do that you’ve done for decades, and can still do on a competitor, on a $1500 device is not a selling point.

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*transition
But that’s an interesting lapsus…

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fixed, ty

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But it was funnier that way

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Fastest? Uhhh, we’ll see about that, I guess. Would be pretty cool, but I have my doubts.

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Okay, outside of the title every time they say “fastest” they follow it up with “at iso power” which apparently means equivalent or same. So they’re basically saying they’re the most efficient twice, but they creatively used the word faster like they are an industry leader in more than one metric when they’re not.

Also I have a feeling their claims won’t even be accurate if someone installs windows on a recent macbook, which is why I suppose they are also only comparing to windows native devices.

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Did they mess up? Seemed like any issues they had were Windows related

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That was part of it, but they hyped up the product so much as a Macbook M series competitor and made outrageous claims, including having very optimistic benchmarks. They shot themselves in the foot because any benchmarks compared to the macbook were against them, especially in efficiency. They promised Linux support shortly after launch too but it’s still not fully here.

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I mean, that’s how qualcomm does business. For as long as they’ve existed, they’ve made ridiculous comparisons about their newest chip against Apple’s.
Fool me once shame on me, fool me twenty times, shame on me again because I should’ve learned 19 times ago

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Qualcomm is too big and well established to be mediocre with day one Linux support

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If they think I would be jumping with joy for android on my desktop they are miscalculating.

For people to switch they have to be excited about your platform. WTF should I get excited for when they are killing open source android core?

I should be Excited about the ad company telling me what apps I can install? Fuck u Google.

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Can’t wait for my next Asus mobo to support this chipset arch.

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Comments in Hardware@lemmy.ml

Unless you count… Y’know… Benchmarks or actual metrics of any kind.

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-qualcomm_snapdragon_x_elite_x1e_80_100-vs-amd_ryzen_7_9800x3d#benchmarks

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This benchmark is from the previous generation (1st gen Elite)

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I’m aware. It’s not available for benchmarks yet (not until well into 2026 in fact) so all we have is corporate gospel. That is why I didn’t use anywhere close to the fastest processor available on the other end either. I made an attempt to take that into account.

Keep in mind that all of their bragging about speed is about the AI capabilities of the chip and only vs other mobile CPUs as well.

See a full report here:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/snapdragon-summit-qualcomm-unveils-snapdragon-x2-elite-extreme-cpu

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