Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite flagship SoC with astonishing performance improvements. The new chip represents one of the biggest generational leaps seen in the Snapdragon 8 series’ history. While no devices powered by the SoC are yet available, Qualcomm did offer preliminary benchmark results. The numbers show that the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the fastest mobile chip the company has ever released by a wide margin.
Qualcomm shared benchmark results for both the CPU and GPU performance of the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The tests were run on a reference phone with the standard chip configuration that includes 2x Prime cores at 4.32 GHz and 6x high-performance cores at 3.53 GHz. The reference device also has 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM at 4.8Gbps. Interestingly, the company did not use Micron’s 9.6Gbps LPDDR5X RAM. Other specs of the reference phone include UFS 4.0 storage (1TB) and a 6.8-inch 144Hz AMOLED display.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is up to 40% more powerful in CPU performance than its predecessor
Starting with the Geekbench 6 CPU tests, the Snapdragon 8 Elite shows plenty of power. As suggested by the benchmarks leaked before the launch, the single-core performance is comparable to that of the Apple A18 Pro. In fact, Apple’s chip has a slight advantage of 4% in the single-core results. As an additional note, the Snapdragon 8 Elite reaches a higher maximum clock speed (4.32GHz vs. 4.05GHz).
However, Qualcomm’s latest flagship SoC shows its power in the multi-core performance test. The Snapdragon 8 Elite shows a 27% performance advantage over Apple’s most powerful mobile chip. This is a fairly wide gap that could be found even in chips from different generations. It’s worth noting that this is Qualcomm’s first 3nm SoC, while Apple has been using 3nm chips for a few years now.
To put it in a bigger picture, the new Snapdragon 8 Elite shows 40% more raw CPU power than its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It also shows more than twice the power of the Google Tensor G4 chip. The new Oryon CPU cores are clearly no gimmick.
Massive gains in GPU power
The power improvements are equally impressive in the GPU department. Qualcomm compared offscreen results from different benchmark platforms to those of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. “Offscreen” means that the tests don’t take into account the device’s display specs. This allows for more comparable numbers between different devices without things like resolution or refresh rate impacting the numbers.
That said, the new flagship SoC has a massive 40% lead over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in 3DMark Wild Life. Again, that’s a pretty impressive generational leap. In even more demanding graphics tests with advanced visual effects, the new chipset still boasts a 34% advantage. The Aztec Ruins High-Tier benchmark results show 28% better OpenGL performance than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
More than ready for the AI era
Qualcomm also claims that its latest SoC is 35% more powerful than its predecessor in ray-tracing. However, the company didn’t offer benchmarks to prove that claim. We’ll have to wait for the first Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered devices to become available to see for ourselves. Lastly, the SoC is more than ready for the AI era, with 30% to 111% higher performance than its predecessor chip’s NPU, depending on the workload.
The new chip is undoubtedly a milestone for the mobile tech industry. The competition will have a hard time surpassing what Qualcomm has shown.
