Reports indicate that Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series laptops offer poor performance in gaming

The first reviews of Qualcomm’s first Snapdragon X Series laptops have been released. But things seem far from impressive in the gaming department.

Microsoft has partnered with Qualcomm, granting the chipmaker an exclusivity deal for Copilot+ PC. Although laptops powered by the new Snapdragon X chipsets: the Snapdragon This was due to Microsoft’s decision to postpone the recall. As Windows Central’s Zac Bowden noted, the Redmond company had asked its OEM partners not to ship review units to retail locations until June 18, until it removed Recall from the devices.

Now that the embargo has been lifted, reviews of the new Snapdragon X Series laptops are available on major blogs and YouTube channels. Here is a brief overview of the technical specifications of the chipset.

Qualcomm Snapdragon

• Processor: Qualcomm Oryon 10 or 12 core processor, up to 3.8 GHz multi-threaded, up to 4.3 GHz Dual Core Boost, 42 MB total cache
• GPU: Qualcomm Adreno, up to 4.6 TFLOPS
• NPU: Qualcomm Hexagon, 45 HIGH
• Memory: Up to 64 GB LPDDR5x, 135 GB/s, 8448 MT/s, 8 channels, shared system-level cache

The Qualcomm Snapdragon The SoC has an Adreno graphics processing unit capable of 4.6 teraflops. Qualcomm has its own app called Adreno Control Panel, which will keep GPU drivers up to date and automatically optimize game settings.

Reviewers are unimpressed with the Snapdragon X’s gaming performance

This sounds impressive on paper, and real-world testing seems to suggest the same thing. Reviewers who tested the ASUS Vivobook S 15 claim that the device offers very good performance for everyday tasks and impressive battery life. The SoC could give Intel Lunar Lake and AMD Strix Point some good competition. But Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Notebookcheck compared the chipset with other ARM chips and the Snapdragon X ranked last in the test.

Other reviewers have also pointed out that Snapdragon X chipsets don’t offer optimal frame rates. Videocardz reports that Cyberpunk 2077 ran at 34fps, while Baldur’s Gate 3 ran at 35fps at low graphics settings of 1080p. And this seems to be the case even when scaling technologies such as AMD’s FSR or Intel’s XESS have been used. Some games would not work at all, but this is probably due to emulation issues on the ARM chipset. Another issue pointed out by reviewers was that some games were locked to a different resolution than the laptop’s screen.

You might wonder why use it for gaming, well, Qualcomm marketed the chipset as a gaming chipset, claiming that it “drives game-changing performance and efficiency.” The company had even claimed that most Windows games should run fine on devices powered by its ARM chipset.

Although it has a powerful NPU, the laptop cannot use it for Copilot+ PC because it is not designed for on-device support. The application uses Microsoft servers to provide online answers. Samsung launched the Galaxy Book4Edge a few days ago, and the Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptop likely suffers from the same gaming performance shortcomings as other devices.

By the way, Microsoft is adding new features to Windows Recall, despite criticism from security experts who have questioned the privacy concerns and risks that could arise due to the tool’s automatic screenshot capture system of AI.

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