Qualcomm’s 18-core Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme dominates in first benchmarks – 18 cores and 48GB of on-package memory on a 192-bit bus look tough to beat

Last week, Qualcomm announced its upcoming Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme chips for laptops and compact desktops at its yearly summit in Maui. Some specs were revealed (the top-end Extreme model will pack 18 cores and a top clock speed of 5 GHz on two cores), and the company made lofty promises of up to 31% better performance while sipping 43% less power than its first-gen Snapdragon X silicon. But it didn’t showcase any benchmark numbers or back up those claims – until now.

We were at the…