Qualcomm is crying foul over the technical details of benchmarks that make Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 look faster than its Snapdragon X Elite chips.
The laptop arena is more competitive than it’s been in years, thanks in part to this year’s splashy launch of Qualcomm-powered Microsoft Copilot+ PCs. But as Intel has fired back with its recently announced Core Ultra Series 2 chips (also known as its „Lunar Lake“ line), Qualcomm has taken issue with specific performance claims made by the more established laptop chipmaker. At this year’s Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm specifically called out issues with Intel’s claims about CPU performance, speeds on battery, and overall issues around efficiency and battery life.
Some sniping back and forth between competitors is quite common in the industry—it’s not unusual to see Apple compare performance against similar Intel chips during an announcement, for example. As Qualcomm’s presence in the laptop space has grown, comparisons with Snapdragon X processors were inevitable. But Qualcomm won’t let those numbers be skewed by what it says are cherry-picked comparisons, poorly matched product configurations, or other sleight-of-hand.
In a series of meetings with the press, Qualcomm took issue with several specific claims made by Intel, which were repeated in the reporting of various outlets, including our own story about the Lunar Lake launch. Qualcomm specifically took issue with Intel’s claim of „The fastest cores. Period.“
In a series of benchmark results presented by Sriram Dixit, Qualcomm’s director of engineering, the company highlighted several issues it has with the information backing this claim.Is Intel Goosing the Numbers With Choice Chips?
According to Dixit, Intel’s published comparisons rely on a chip with no US retail availability, the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V. Billed as Intel’s top Core Ultra processor, the Ultra 9 288V is not included in any currently sold laptops. That means the chip can’t be tested independently, and any reviewers who were provided with laptops that have the chip are using pre-release hardware that may not align with real-world implementations once the CPU shows up in retail laptops.
Though Qualcomm’s claims are technically true—laptops equipped with the Core Ultra 9 288V aren’t out in the wild yet—the chip is slated to be available in models from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and MSI in the near future. (Our initial test of Lunar Lake used the more common Core Ultra 7 258V in an Asus Zenbook S 14.)
The results Intel has touted also omit some Snapdragon X chips, notably the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100—Qualcomm’s top-performing laptop processor. But, just like Intel’s top chip, the 84 variant is thin on the ground, sold only in the most expensive configuration of the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge 16.
