To close out the Snapdragon Summit this week, Qualcomm held a benchmarking session for the new chipset. Showing just how confident they are with the new 2nd generation Oryon CPU. And boy, it did not disappoint.
We were given about an hour or so to benchmark a reference design device and run all sorts of benchmarks. We mostly ran benchmarks that we use in our reviews, this way we can compare it to many other chipsets over the past year, like the A18 Pro, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, MediaTek Dimensity 9300, etc. The results were surprising, but they were also not surprising.
Qualcomm has a reference device here at Snapdragon Summit, which we’ll call the “Snapdragon 8 Elite QRD” moving forward. This device of course has the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, it also has 24GB of LPDDR5x RAM up to 4.8Gbps, 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage and a 6.8-inch WFHD+ 144Hz AMOLED display. It also has a fairly small battery, but this isn’t meant to show off the battery life – it’s only 4,167mAh.
Geekbench 6
Let’s start off with Geekbench 6. As you likely know, Geekbench 6 tests the raw performance of the CPU and GPU, including both single- and multi-core. It’s a really good test to gauge just how powerful the device is, and here’s the results:
- Single-core: 3,220
- Multi-core: 10,415
- GPU: 17,867
These are pretty insane numbers, which actually beat Apple’s latest and greatest, at least on the CPU side. Apple is still doing some crazy stuff with their CPUs. Here’s how it compares to the Galaxy S24 Ultra (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy), Apple iPhone 16 Pro (A18 Pro), Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra (MediaTek Dimensity 9300), and the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL (Tensor G4).
On the single core, these scores break down as:
- Snapdragon 8 Elite QRD: 3,220
- Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: 2,176
- Apple iPhone 16 Pro: 2,981
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: 2,191
- Google Pixel 9 Pro XL: 1,947
On the multi-core score, these scores are:
- Snapdragon 8 Elite QRD: 10,415
- Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: 6,567
- Apple iPhone 16 Pro: 7,939
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: 7,358
- Google Pixel 9 Pro XL: 4,654
And finally on the GPU test, these scores are:
- Snapdragon 8 Elite QRD: 17,867
- Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: 11,414
- Apple iPhone 16 Pro: 32,846
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: 12,204
- Google Pixel 9 Pro XL: 6,464
As you can tell, Apple still has a health margin on the GPU, but then again the iPhone does have console-quality games running on their chipsets. So, that score is definitely what you’d expect to see from an Apple chipset. When comparing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to the new Snapdragon 8 Elite, we’re seeing about a 37% increase year-over-year. That is pretty much unheard of in the world of processors, but definitely good to see.
3D Mark Extreme Stress Test
This is another test that we run quite a bit on our review devices, so we can do a good job of showing how it compares to other devices on the market today.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite QRD scored a 7,121 in the 3D Mark Extreme Stress Test. Now we do tend to measure the thermals with this test, but since the QRD is not designed for dissipating heat, it would be kind of unfair. So we’ll have to save that for a device that launches with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which will be as soon as next week.
Compared to other chipsets, this really blows everything out of the water.
- Snapdragon 8 Elite QRD: 7,121
- Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: 4,376
- Apple iPhone 16 Pro: 3,976
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: 5,352
- Google Pixel 9 Pro XL: 2,565
That’s nearly double what the A18 Pro could do, about 39% faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and almost triple what the Tensor G4 has done in our testing. This is expected, as the Tensor G4 is not built for speed but for AI.
AnTuTu
The last test we ran, we don’t typically do on our reviews, but we did have a few devices with different chipsets here in Maui with us to do the testing here. So here’s how it broke down.
- Snapdragon 8 Elite QRD: 3,035,115
- Xiaomi 14 Ultra: 1,771,035
- Apple iPhone 16 Pro: 1,657,579
- Samsung Galaxy S10 Ultra: 2,038,129
- Google Pixel 9 Pro XL: 1,187,754
This means that on AnTuTu, the Snapdragon 8 Elite has over a million-point lead on every single processor here. And it nearly triples what the Tensor G4 did, which is not surprising in the least.
There’s a new king in the world of mobile devices, and anything powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite is going to have incredible performance.
