Qualcomm is gearing up to launch its next-gen flagship smartphone chipset later this month. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will debut at the Snapdragon Summit 2023, which begins on October 24. The new chip is already generating a lot of buzz in the industry thanks to the massive performance gains it brings to the table, particularly the “For Galaxy” version that will be exclusively available to Samsung. Benchmark entries show it exceeds GPU estimates.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 For Galaxy exceeds estimates in GPU benchmark
The upcoming Qualcomm processors scored more than 17,000 in Geekbench 6’s Vulkan benchmark. The US version of the Galaxy S24+, which will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 For Galaxy, achieved a score of 17,013, while the Ultra model topped it with a score of 17,134. The same test yielded a score of 9,379 with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which features the “For Galaxy” version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
Going by these benchmark scores, the next-gen Qualcomm chip’ Adreno 750 GPU will bring about an 80 percent performance boost over its predecessor. That’s double the early estimates of a 40 percent GPU performance gain. Of course, you won’t see the same level of improvement in every application or test scenario. In fact, we are talking about pre-production units here, so the overall gain may still be lower on the retail units of the Galaxy S24 phones.
However, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 should bring a notable GPU performance gain over the Gen 2 chip. The new chip also upgrades to the latest ARM CPUs and replaces one efficiency core with a faster mid-core. Qualcomm has clocked all CPUs at a higher frequency too. With these changes, the CPU performance should also see a massive jump. As usual, the “For Galaxy” version will have a faster CPU than the standard version.
Samsung’s Exynos 2400 is facing a tough fight
Unlike the Galaxy S23, the Galaxy S24 series won’t feature the new Qualcomm chip exclusively. Samsung will ship the Ultra model with it globally, but the base Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ will get the Exynos 2400 in some markets. Early CPU benchmarks have shown mixed results with the new Exynos and Snapdragon processors delivering comparable results.
However, on the GPU side, it looks like a tough fight for the Exynos 2400’s Xclipse 940 GPU. The global version of the Galaxy S24+, which features the new Samsung chip, scored 15,479 in Geekbench 6’s Vulkan benchmark, the same GPU test where the Snapdragon-powered model scored 17,013. If the real-life performances of the two solutions see a similar gap, that would be hugely detrimental to Exynos’ already-ill reputation.
That said, early benchmark scores are never a true measure of a device’s real-life performance. Case in point, the Exynos-powered Galaxy S24+ outperformed the Snapdragon-powered Galaxy S24 Ultra in a recent CPU benchmark run. The Exynos 2400’s Xclipse 940 GPU also yielded a higher score than the Adreno 750 in the OpenCL test (14,908 vs. 14,731). We should get a clearer picture once the new chips are official.
2023-10-16 15:04:55