Snapdragon X CPUs for Affordable PCs With Up to 45 TOPS of NPU Performance Launched at CES 2025

Qualcomm on Monday unveiled its latest Snapdragon X platform for budget PCs at CES 2025. The company's latest octa-core CPUs are designed to compete with affordable chips from Intel and AMD, while offering support for AI features via a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) and improved battery efficiency. The new Snapdragon X platform is expected to power computers that are priced under $600 (roughly Rs. 51,400), which should bring down the cost of Arm-based Windows laptops by a considerable amount.

Snapdragon X Platform Specifications

The newly announced Snapdragon X platform (X1-26-100) is designed for affordable computers, and features eight Oryon CPU cores with a peak clock speed of up to 3GHz. This is lower than the Snapdragon X Plus (up to 3.4GHz) and Snapdragon X Elite (up to 3.8GHz), for midrange and high-end laptops, respectively.

The 4nm chipset supports up to 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM, with 135GB/s memory bandwidth. It features a Qualcomm Adreno GPU that supports up to three external displays at 4K/ 60Hz. It supports Windows 11 along with Copilot+ features that are available on more expensive PCs.

Snapdragon X platform specifications
Photo Credit: Qualcomm

Qualcomm has also equipped the Snapdragon X CPUs with a Hexagon NPU that is capable of delivering 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of AI performance. As a result, we can expect to see more affordable Copilot+ PCs in the coming months, and these will compete with similarly priced processors from Intel and AMD that lack a dedicated NPU.

The Snapdragon X platform will also support features available on Qualcomm's more expensive chips, such as instant wake and standby efficiency. The company claims that it offers up to two times longer battery life and up to 163 percent faster performance than competing processors. Besides, it supports 5G, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4, USB 4 Type-C connectivity.

Customers can expect PCs equipped with the Snapdragon X platform from OEMs like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, and Asus in "early 2025". Qualcomm also says that these devices are expected to be priced around $600 (roughly Rs. 51,400), which should make Copilot+ PCs more accessible in the coming months.