Can Qualcomm's New Snapdragon X2 Chips Beat a MacBook? Initial Tests Show Promise

Last week at Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm announced its next-gen line of PC chips, Snapdragon X2. The chips will come in two flavors: the X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme. At a benchmarking session at the conference, held in Hawaii, I was given a closer look at just how the X2 Elite Extreme will perform across a variety of common tests, using reference laptops Qualcomm brought to the event.

Here's what I learned in my short time with these devices and how they compare to their closest rivals, including MacBooks. (Qualcomm paid for a portion of my travel expenses to attend the Snapdragon Summit, but the company has no say in our reporting.)

Testing the Elite Extreme

Let's start with Cinebench 2024, a popular benchmark based on Maxon's Cinema 4D, an industry standard in the world of 3D modeling and animation. It's a heavy ...