With the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, Windows 11 on Arm is finally catching up with Apple’s M4 lineup, but it’s still behind Apple’s 10-core M5 in single-core performance. The most powerful Windows 11 on Arm chip is Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100, and it posted a Geekbench single-core score of 4,072 and 23,611 in multi-core.
These results are impressive, and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is not the only CPU in the “X2” lineup. Windows Latest previously obtained benchmarks for a reference design (not an actual device) running Snapdragon X2 Elite, and it posted a score of 3,849 in single-core and up to 16,222 in multi-core.
Before I talk about the numbers for the SKUs, let’s take a look at Elite and Elite Extreme SKUs in the Snapdragon X2 series:
| SKU | Cores | Max / Base CPU clock | TDP | Memory | NPU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X2E-80-100 | 12 | Up to 4.7 GHz / 3.4 GHz | 55W | LPDDR5X | 80 TOPS |
| X2E-84-100 | 12 | Up to 4.7 GHz / 3.4 GHz | 70W | LPDDR5X | 80 TOPS |
| X2E-88-100 | 18 | Up to 4.7 GHz / 3.4 GHz | 55W | LPDDR5X | 80 TOPS |
| X2E-90-100 | 18 | Up to 4.7 GHz / 3.4 GHz | 70W | LPDDR5X | 80 TOPS |
| X2E-96-100 (Elite Extreme) | 18 | Up to 5.0 GHz / 3.6 GHz | 82W | LPDDR5X | 80 TOPS |
There’s also a Snapdragon X2 Plus SKU that I have not included in the table because we don’t have details of the chip. Plus is particularly for low-end hardware, so it’s not going to be better than any of these “X2E” chips listed above. It doesn’t deserve our attention for now, as we’re looking at the best-performing Windows on Arm CPUs.
YouTuber Alex Ziskind, who had early access to Snapdragon chips, shared Geekbench screenshots of the reference units running X2 Elite “Extreme.” Here are all the screenshots of Geekbench for the Snapdragon X2 lineup:
I used these numbers and compared them against the existing Apple M chips.
How powerful are the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Extreme chips compared to the Apple M3 and Apple M4 variants?
X2E-80-100
According to internal Geekbench tests (not available on the Geekbench website yet), Snapdragon X2 Elite’s 12-core X2E-80-100 chip, which is the base variant in the Elite lineup, gives us a score of 3850 in single-core and 16,171 in multi-core.
X2E-80-100 already sits well above Apple M3, which is about 2,997 in single-core and 11,464 multi-core. This chip also edges past M3 Pro on multi-core (M3 Pro is typically around the mid-15K range).
Against Apple’s base M4, it’s basically in the same single-core class (3.7K to 3.8K), and it can even come out slightly ahead on multi-core because it has more cores to throw at the workload.
X2E-88-100
Next up, we’ve Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-88-100, which has 18 cores, and it fetches up to 3,838 score in single-core. This is more or less at the same level as the 12-core variant, but it meaningfully raises multi-core to 20,320. For comparison, Apple M3 Max is typically in the low 21K multi-core tests.
X2E-88-100 is a bit below M4 Pro multi-core (typically low-23K). Single-core is still close to base M4, but usually behind M4 Pr or M4 Max.
X2E-96-100 “Elite Extreme” is the most powerful Arm processor for Windows 11
But the beast processor is the Snapdragon X2 X2E-96-100 “Elite Extreme.” This has 4,072 points in single-score and a whopping 23,611 in multi-core. On single-core, it’s effectively in M4 Max territory, which is usually 4.07K.
On multi-core, Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is slightly ahead of what you usually see for M4 Pro (we spotted multiple listings showing M4 Pro at 23K for multi-core).
However, Elite Extreme is still behind M4 Max, which can go above 26,000 points in multi-core tests.
Here’s a table comparing Snapdragon X2 X2E-80-100, X2E-88-100, and X2E-96-100 (Elite Extreme) with Apple M lineup:
| Chip / Variant source: WindowsLatest.com |
Cores | Geekbench 6.5 Single-core | Geekbench 6.5 Multi-core |
|---|---|---|---|
| X2E-80-100 | 12 | 3,850 | 16,171 |
| X2E-88-100 | 18 | 3,838 | 20,320 |
| X2E-96-100 (Elite Extreme) | 18 | 4,072 | 23,611 |
| Apple M3 | Base | 2,997 (2,976–3093) | 11,464 (10,655–12,031) |
| Apple M3 Pro | 12 | 3,136 (3,078–3146) | 15,422 (14,691–15,877) |
| Apple M3 Max | 16 | 3,134 (3,031–3175) | 21,220 (21,083–21,409) |
| Apple M4 | 10 | 3,783 (3,715–3913) | 15,426 (15,172–15,564) |
| Apple M4 Pro | 14 | 3,918 (3,870–3976) | 23,081 (22,696–23,164) |
| Apple M4 Max | 16 | 4,070 (4,025–4102) | 26,814 (26,610–26,873) |
| Apple M5 | 10 | 4,351 (4,298–4367) | 18,053 (17,795–18,126) |
Snapdragon X2 is clearly a strong platform, and now the ball is in Microsoft’s court. The company needs to meaningfully improve Windows 11 if it wants to compete with Apple.
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