That Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is a very capable chip is no longer a debatable point. Even so, the degree of outperformance that the chip has just registered against its competitors is a surprise, as demonstrated by Signal65 in its own testing of the chip.

Signal65 has just put Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100, Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, and AMD Ryzen AI 9 465 chips through their paces, delivering a few surprising tidbits in the process.

Before going further, let's review the architecture of each of these three chips. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100 has 18 CPU cores (12 Oryon Prime Cores + 6 Oryon Performance Cores), with a max frequency of 5.0GHz, an Adreno X2-90 GPU, Qualcomm's Hexagon NPU that delivers a performance of 80 TOPS, and 48 GB of LPDDR5X.

In contrast, the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H has 16 CPU cores (4P + 8E + 4LPE), with a max frequency of 5.1GHz, an Arc B390 (12 Xe3 cores) GPU, Intel's NPU 5 that delivers a performance of 50 TOPS, and 32 GB of LPDDR5X.

Finally, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 465 has 10 CPU cores (4 Zen 5 + 6 Zen 5c), with a max frequency of 5.0 GHz, an Arc B390 (12 Xe3 cores) GPU, AMD's XDNA 2 NPU that delivers a performance of 50 TOPS, and 32 GB of LPDDR5X.

This brings us to the core of today's topic. Signal65 has just thoroughly tested the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, Intel's Core Ultra X9, and AMD's Ryzen AI 9 465, delivering the following interesting findings :

1. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme was up to 53 percent faster than the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H and up to 83 percent faster than the AMD Ryzen AI 9 465 in Geekbench 7, and up to 87 percent faster than both in Cinebench 2026 multi-threaded rendering.
2. On Procyon AI Computer Vision, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme delivered nearly 2x the performance of the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, and around 2.4x the performance of AMD Ryzen AI 9 465.
3. "Running on battery in Balanced mode, the Snapdragon system outperformed the Intel system plugged in at Best Performance in every CPU and AI benchmark."
4. With its prices starting from $1,699, a system powered by the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme delivers "roughly 2x the performance per dollar of the $2,299 Intel system, and up to 2.6x in AI workloads."

These findings suggest that Intel's Core Ultra X9-based systems are not only more expensive, on average, than their Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme-based counterparts, but also offer performance that is wholly subpar.

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