Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Plus processor has the same goal as its predecessor: to provide a slightly stripped-down, leaner alternative processor for midrange Windows on Arm laptops. But there’s a slight difference. While last year’s X Plus chip came in two flavors: a 10-core and an 8-core offering, Qualcomm is offering customers either a 10-core or 6-core Snapdragon X2 Plus chip instead. Qualcomm is eyeing Intel’s Core Ultra 200-series chips as well as the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series as potential targets. Qualcomm’s Plus series of processors essentially fill the same role as a Core i5: Qualcomm uses the same CPU architecture, plus the same GPU (adjusted for power, which lowers the speed) and the same NPU. But Qualcomm is being way more aggressive in terms of the performance comparisons. Eighteen months ago, Qualcomm was claiming that its X Plus chip offered 28 percent faster performance at the same power. This time, it claims that the top 10-core chip in the X2 Plus family delivers over three times the performance of the competition, the Core Ultra 7 265U. Qualcomm’s first-generation Plus processors appeared in the Acer Swift 14 AI, the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus, and the Dell Latitude 7455, among others. The company will disclose more customers here at the CES show in Las Vegas. Executives said to expect the X2 Plus to land in the same price range as the X Plus, or devices costing about $799. Essentially, the mission of the X2 Plus is the same as Qualcomm’s first generation, “to really get the same technology advantages to more and more users,” said Mandar Deshpande, senior director of product management for the compute business at Qualcomm, in a press briefing with reporters. How fast is the Snapdragon X2 Plus? Officially, the two Snapdragon X2 Plus chips are known as the 10-core X2P-64-100 and the 6-core X2P-42-100, reflecting Qualcomm’s impenetrable naming scheme. Typically, you’ll see both chips referred to as the 10-core X2 Plus and the 6-core X2 Plus. The 10-core X2 Plus will run at speeds up to 4.0GHz, with an X2-45 GPU that Qualcomm hasn’t disclosed the speeds of. The 6-core X2 Plus also runs at that same clock speed and features that same GPU as well. Both chips also include identical NPUs with 80 TOPS. Why six cores? Deshpande shrugged off the question. “Fundamentally, we’re not really tied to core counts, frequencies, or [power],” he said. Qualcomm’s current list of processors does not reflect the new additions, but you can see how they’ll fit in: probably a touch below the older Snapdragon X Elite, and with similar specifications to the first-gen Snapdragon X Plus chips, at least on paper. Those chips also included an additional two processors with some variations in clock speed; Deshpande declined to comment when asked if Qualcomm would do the same with the X2 Plus. We also don’t know the clock speeds of the GPUs. Though the Snapdragon X2 Plus and the Snapdragon X1 Plus look similar on paper, the numbers may be deceiving. Like the Snapdragon X2 Elite, the X2 Plus is built on updated third-generation Oryon CPU cores, which increase performance. While the Snapdragon X Elite included a pair of cores that could run at a faster “turbo speed” to accomplish high-priority tasks quicker, the X Plus did not, and the X2 Plus does not either. On the other hand, the X2 Plus base clock speed is as high as the turbo speed was in the X1 Plus, a Qualcomm representative noted. One of the key improvements for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite was its inclusion of “performance” and “prime” cores, also tuned for high-performance work. Those, the X2 Plus has. The ten-core X2 Plus has six prime cores and four performance cores, while the six-core X2 Plus includes six prime cores, the representative added. Still, comparing the X1 Plus to the X2 Plus, performance improves significantly: 35 percent more single-threaded CPU performance, and up to 39 percent more GPU performance, using 43 percent less power. (Qualcomm used Geekbench and 3DMark’s Steel Nomad tests for the comparisons.) Qualcomm is projecting significant gains over the other mobile processor platforms competing against it, which it classifies as some of Intel’s Core Ultra 200 7-class processors as well as the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350. Like the Snapdragon X2 Elite, the X2 Plus chips run at full speed on battery power as well when the laptop is plugged in, a key differentiator from the competition. Naturally, Qualcomm is comparing itself to the existing “Lunar Lake” and “Strix Point” platforms from Intel and AMD; Intel has already announced its next-gen “Panther Lake” mobile platform, and AMD is expected to debut its “Gorgon Point” mobile platform at CES. None of these chips have shipped, however, so Qualcomm can’t test against them. Qualcomm didn’t quote any battery-life estimates for Snapdragon Plus notebooks; the company said that it is still working with customers to optimize those products. A big question mark continues to be the utility of the NPU, and how receptive applications partners and customers will be to using local AI on the PC. Since the X2 Plus includes the same 80 TOPS NPU as the X2 Elite, that will allow more NPU-powered features from Microsoft Windows, Da Vinci Resolve, and other apps to run simultaneously, much in the same way that a powerful CPU or GPU allows multiple apps to be run simultaneously. The chip’s memory bandwidth is also up to 152Gbps, which gives enough headroom for LLMs. If and when an NPU-powered AI future comes to pass, Qualcomm will be ready. As far as games, Deshpande said that the company has tested 1,400 games on the Snapdragon platform, and that they’re running “really good” — where that means at 60Hz on a 1080p resolution. Microsoft published an update to its Prism emulator in mid-December, which provides some additional support. While Qualcomm is encouraging its partners to write native Arm code that can boost performance, the updated Prism emulator will allow a wider range of applications to simply run on Windows on Arm, without specifying exactly what. Qualcomm is exploring in other ways, too. “One thing now that we’re working closely with the OEMs is really now innovating on the form factor front, right?” Deshpande said. “So we’re trying to make the PCs thinner and lighter. We’re looking at panelist devices. We’re looking at desktops, which can be made more portable. So all of that form factor innovation is very exciting, and you should expect those types of devices coming in the market very soon.”