u/Idkwatnam

Their test environment was a Razer Thunderbolt dock with an NVMe slot combined with an NVMe to OCuLink adapter to connect an RTX 4060 8GB so there could be potentially better performance extracted if they had gone with a direct USB4 eGPU dock.

Cyberpunk 2077 averaged 44 FPS with the Ray Tracing Low Preset at 1440p and DLSS set to automatic.

Forza Horizon 6 had big framerate drop issues but otherwise averaged 46 FPS overall at a render resolution of 1707×960 (DLSS was on) and Medium preset indicating some sort of CPU bottleneck likely due to emulation.

This is something I was not expecting Qualcomm to do given how long it's been since people have reported the lack of those extensions but they've finally actually delivered it on the X1-85 (don't have an X1-45 to test if that's the case there also). I've never had an issue with these extensions personally but I know some games and programs require that extension so it's very nice to see Qualcomm not give up on X1 owners.

Here's a comparison between the prior driver and the current "bleeding edge" one:

Compare reports - Vulkan Hardware Database by Sascha Willems

Since this was ripped out of Windows Update from the Qualcomm CRD (using a branch of UUPMediaCreator that can fetch BSPs) there's no changelog to see what specifically changed so I am hoping that bringing it up here we can document what changes there are and if it massively improves anything else other than the expected programs.

I uploaded the driver here for those who don't want to compile the UUPMediaCreator branch (expires in 3 days):

EDIT: apparently the .7z has extraction issues if you just use File Explorer so I've replaced the link with the .cab

https://litter.catbox.moe/u3z5r6109fcg6a0d.cab

I've personally noticed that they still haven't fixed the GPU driver crashing under certain high load Vulkan applications (such as running Super Mario Galaxy on Dolphin at 9x and then switching programs or screen sharing at the same time) but the addition of those extensions gives me hope for them to start taking GPU drivers a lot more seriously.

The Snapdragon X Elite seems to produce AV1 video files that cannot be seeked, as in you need to let the video play through, you can't skip around. All the other hardware encoders seem fine except for that one.

The AV1 encoder is only accessible via the MediaFoundation API on Windows, which both Handbrake and FFmpeg support.

Handbrake is pretty easy, in the video tab just switch the video encoder to "AV1 (MediaFoundation)"

FFmpeg is a bit more complicated with the command being:

ffmpeg.exe -i [input] -pix_fmt nv12 -c:v av1_mf -hw_encoding 1 [output]

EDIT: I forgot to point out that this issue also seems to prevent creating .mkv and .webm videos with the AV1 codec

This is something I found interesting:

IdeaPad Slim 3 15Q8X10 PSREF

Lenovo has listings for an 8GB model of the Slim 3x up on PSREF, and it is still supposedly a "CoPilot+ PC" despite the requirements for that being 16GB RAM minimum. It is only available in France apparently.

https://preview.redd.it/vhyfqckhsm0h1.png?width=2023&format=png&auto=webp&s=c0a947496e239d8e16fabb902e09b918639ba499

Could this mean that Microsoft has lowered the requirements for the CoPilot+ branding to either compete with the MacBook Neo or maybe to allow shrinkflation? (Allowing OEMs to sell CoPilot+ PCs with 8GB at the same price the 16GB models used to sell due to the on-going RAM shortage.)

Another thing that points towards Qualcomm prepping for a bigger focus or refresh of the base model Snapdragon X chip is that they've introduced an X126101, mentioned since the NPU driver dated April 2026:

https://preview.redd.it/zezl4v8jtm0h1.png?width=1537&format=png&auto=webp&s=bb5da85acd101b5b720200ed890137a575655106

For those unaware the last 3 digits on the CPU number is meant to be for "variant" which up until now has not been used at all:

https://preview.redd.it/xfa3q078um0h1.png?width=1654&format=png&auto=webp&s=f97a8f810234893d050080aff2232c683e518496

I've tried restricting my X Elite laptop to 8GB of RAM just for fun but it ended up in my Windows install getting soft-broken, having needed to enter recovery and remove the boot flag. It could be that they've made a whole new variant just to address this?