Qualcomm has announced its plans to launch Snapdragon X Elite systems this summer, along with unannounced consumer versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 in May, all powered by Snapdragon chips. The company assures game developers that their titles should work seamlessly on the upcoming Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops without the need for porting.

During a 2024 Game Developers Conference session titled “Windows on Snapdragon, a Platform Ready for your PC Games,” Qualcomm engineer Issam Khalil emphasized that the unannounced laptops will utilize emulation to run x86/64 games at close to full speed. This is a significant move by Qualcomm, as it indicates their confidence in the capabilities of their upcoming Arm-based laptops.

Developers working with Windows on Snapdragon have three options, as explained by Khalil. They can port their titles to native ARM64 for optimal CPU performance and power usage, create a hybrid “ARM64EC” app for near-native performance, or simply rely on x64 emulation without making any changes to their code or assets.

According to Qualcomm, most games are primarily bottlenecked by the GPU rather than the CPU, and the company ensures that GPU performance remains unaffected. Additionally, Qualcomm claims to have Adreno GPU drivers for DX11, DX12, Vulkan, and OpenCL, with support for DX9 and up to OpenGL 4.6 via mapping layers.

With the impending launch of Snapdragon X Elite systems and the promise of seamless game compatibility on the new Arm-based laptops, Qualcomm aims to make a significant impact in the laptop market, similar to Apple’s success with its Arm-based laptops. The company’s announcement has sparked anticipation and raised expectations for the upcoming Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops, signaling a potential shift in the industry’s landscape.