News Update: Gaming Performance of Snapdragon X Elite Powered Laptops

By Yao Liwei, posted on March 28, 2024

A new laptop powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite platform is set to hit the market soon. Recently, its gaming performance was showcased for the first time. While the benchmark scores may not be outstanding, the smoothness of the graphics is quite acceptable.

In a demonstration, a reference laptop ran the large 3D game Baldur’s Gate 3 at a resolution of 1080p, averaging around 30 FPS. From the video, it’s evident that despite the slightly lower frame rate, the graphics remain smooth without any noticeable lag.

However, the specific game quality settings used in this demonstration and the intensity level of the game were not disclosed. If faced with more demanding situations like large-scale intense battles, its performance might not be able to maintain the same level of smoothness.

The Snapdragon X Elite is designed based on Arm architecture and instruction set, requiring the use of emulation and translation methods to run Windows x86 programs and games. It supports various graphics acceleration technologies such as DirectX and Vulkan.

Currently, this approach seems feasible without the need for specific porting, with the key lying in the efficiency of translation and additional optimization work. It’s reported that Qualcomm has already tested games like Baldur’s Gate 3, Control, and Red Vision 2, with the performance being comparable to integrated Radeon 780M graphics on AMD Ryzen 7040/8040 series, making it possibly one of the most powerful integrated graphics solutions available.