As we get closer to the launch of ARM-based Snapdragon X Elite laptops, new details are emerging around the chipset's performance, benchmarks and x86-x64 compatibility. At the Game Developers Conference 2024 (GDC), Qualcomm engineer revealed many interesting details about gaming compatibility on the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite chipset for PC. According to a report by The Verge, Qualcomm is confident that PC games could run on the Snapdragon X Elite effortlessly.

There are three ways x86-x64 games can run on the Snapdragon X Elite. First, developers can port the game to the native ARM64 architecture for best performance and efficiency. Then developers can create an emulation-capable app, called ARM64EC, where Windows libraries and Qualcomm drivers run natively, but the rest of the app is emulated. Here, games would deliver near-native performance. Image courtesy: Sean Hollister / The Verge

Third, and most importantly, if the developer doesn't make any changes, the x86-x64 app should work just like that using Windows x64 emulation. Here all x86 binaries are translated to ARM64 which affects CPU performance (and battery life), but this only happens the first time the code is translated. Then the emulation layer uses the ARM64 cache directly.

Apart from that, to maintain gaming compatibility on the Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm has prepared Adreno GPU drivers for Microsoft's graphics API, DirectX. It has already developed GPU drivers for DirectX 11, 12, Vulkan and OpenCL. It also supports legacy DirectX 9 API and OpenGL 4.6 to DX9on12 and GLon12 layers respectively.