Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite performance drops following driver update

Users of laptops equipped with Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite processors are reporting severe performance regressions following the installation of Qualcomm Adreno GPU driver version 32.0.181.0 for Windows on ARM.

Technical reports indicate that the update causes significant bottlenecks in GPU-accelerated computing. Specifically, local large language model (LLM) processing speeds via the OpenCL backend have dropped by as much as 87 percent. Content creators have also reported substantial issues with video editing, noting that 1080P video rendering in Adobe Premiere Pro has increased from approximately 1 minute 40 seconds to nearly 10 minutes.

Investigations suggest the issue is confined to the Adreno GPU instruction pipeline rather than the Oryon CPU or Hexagon NPU. Users have found that rolling back to the previous driver version, 32.0.172.2, restores normal performance levels.