Qualcomm claims 90% game compatibility with its new Adreno X2 GPU
Qualcomm is finally taking gaming seriously with its Snapdragon X2 Elite CPUs and Adreno X2 GPU
During the company’s “Snapdragon Architecture Deep Dive 2025” event in San Diego, Qualcomm highlighted the gaming credentials of its new Snapdragon X2 Elite processors. With support for anti-cheat tools, higher performance, and stronger game support, Qualcomm’s new Adreno X2 GPU takes Qualcomm’s gaming performance to a new level.
Qualcomm’s new Adreno X2 GPU is DirectX 12.2 Ultimate-compliant and 2.3x faster than its predecessor. Improvements include enhanced ray tracing units, more render slices (4 vs 1), larger caches, and a wide range of other architectural changes. These changes boost Qualcomm’s gaming performance and its game compatibility. This allows Qualcomm’s GPUs to run games faster, and support a wider range of PC games.
(Images from Qualcomm via PC Watch)
Adreno X2 game compatibility
With its new X2 GPUs, Qualcomm has promised a more consistent driver release schedule and increased game compatibility. Qualcomm has stated that “over 90%” of the “most-played” games on PC are playable at launch. In time, Qualcomm expects to make more games playable with the release of new GPU drivers.
While increasing game support is a welcome change, their 90% figure confirms that many popular PC games remain unplayable on Qualcomm’s GPUs. If we look outside Qualcomm’s list of “most-played game titles”, we will likely see a larger proportion of games being unplayable. This means that gamers who want guaranteed game compatibility will likely be better off with a non-Qualcomm gaming system. That said, at this rate, it’s probable that Qualcomm’s next-generation GPUs will support almost all PC games.
(Images from Qualcomm via PC Watch)
GPU Performance
Overall, Qualcomm’s Adreno X2 GPU delivers 2.3x the average framerate performance of its predecessor. This is a huge generational leap in performance. This change makes more games playable at 60+ FPS at 1080p on medium settings. Not bad for a mobile SOC.
(Images from Qualcomm via PC Watch)
Qualcomm has also stated that it can deliver more gaming performance than Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 CPUs and AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 mobile chips. However, it is worth noting that Intel will likely release its next-generation “Panther Lake” laptops by the time Qualcomm’s Adreno X2-powered devices become available.
(Images from Qualcomm via PC Watch)
Anti-cheat support
Love it or hate it, most popular online multiplayer games utilise some kind of kernel-level anti-cheating software. Qualcomm has confirmed that it supports several of the most popular kernel-level anti-cheat software available. This means that Qualcomm’s GPUs can be used to play the games that utilise these anti-cheat systems.
Qualcomm has listed support for Epic Games Online Services, Tencent ACE Anti-Cheat, Roblox, Denuvo by Irdeto, InProtect GameGuard, BattleEye, and Uncheater.
(Images from Qualcomm via PC Watch)
Overall, Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Elite processors appear to have come a long way when it comes to game performance. With better GPU performance, enhanced game support, and the promise of stronger driver support, Qualcomm has greatly narrowed the gap with AMD/Intel. However, that doesn’t mean Qualcomm has entirely bridged this gap. Qualcomm still hasn’t achieved near-perfect levels of game support. Furthermore, we will need to see how stable Qualcomm’s framerates are. After all, average framerates can only tell us so much.
You can join the discussion on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 and its boosted gaming credentials on the OC3D Forums.
