Second-gen Snapdragon X PC chips may boost performance up to 22%

Qualcomm's team seems to be in the final development stages of its second-generation Snapdragon X processors for client PCs, and it looks like it is about time for the first leaks about the CPU performance to emerge. This week, a Chinese blogger said that the next-generation Snapdragon X will increase performance by 18-22% compared to the existing Snapdragon X processors, but there are some catches about this claim. The main one is that we are dealing with unofficial information that should be taken with a grain of salt. 

"Hearing that the second-generation Nuvia is expected to start at 4.40 GHz," wrote Focused Digital, a Chinese blogger with 2.227 million followers (via @Jukanlosreve). "Performance is estimated to improve by 18% – 22%." 

Max multi-threaded frequency of PC-oriented Snapdragon X processors with Oryon cores developed by the Nuvia team made on TSMC's N4P process technology (4nm-class) varies from 3.0 GHz to 3.80 GHz, whereas their boost clocks vary from 4.0 GHz to 4.30 GHz. 

We do not know which process technology will be used by Qualcomm's second-generation Snapdragon X CPUs, though a roughly 20% generation-to-generation performance increase looks reasonable if we are looking at a CPU due in 2025. That said, we can only wonder whether the increase is enabled by higher clocks or microarchitectural improvements. If we are talking about processors that are due in 2026 (based on a Dell roadmap that was obtained unofficially) that will compete against 2026 processors, a 20% overall performance increase may not be sufficient to stay competitive. 

The information about the performance of Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon X processors for PCs comes from a Chinese blogger who presumably obtains information from the PC supply chain, and given the number of followers, we may expect this information to be more or less accurate. The post was reposted by a South Korean blogger, who has access to data from Korean financial analysts and who, for some reason, also thinks that the information has merit. 

Qualcomm released its first Snapdragon X Elite processors for PCs (model number SC8380XP) in mid-2024 and reportedly initiated internal testing of its second-generation Snapdragon X Elite processors (model number SC8480XP) in September, 2024. At that time, we did not hear anything about performance estimates of the CPU, but as of now, it's looking like the new processors will offer an 18–22% higher performance than their predecessors.