Whenever a new chipset is announced, the first question on every enthusiast’s lips is “how well does it perform?” Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is no exception. While we’ll have to wait not too long to get our hands on the first consumer devices, we went hands-on with a reference handset at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit that gives us some indication of the chip’s peak potential.
Just a word of caution: retail handsets are unlikely to perform quite as well, owing to their more consumer-friendly form factors and prioritization of battery life and other features over raw chipset performance. As for the specs of the reference unit, Qualcomm paired its 8 Elite Gen 5 with a massive 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM, 1TB UFS4.1 storage, and a 6.8-inch 3,200×1,440 AMOLED LTPO display. So, a very high-end setup.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 benchmarks We’ll start with the CPU; the third revision of Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU cores built on the Arm architecture. Qualcomm cranked the Prime core peak clock speeds up to 4.6GHz, from an already speedy 4.32GHz with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, while the Performance cores can hit 3.62GHz. Combined with some architecture and cache revisions, Qualcomm claims this can result in up to 20% better performance with 16% better power efficiency.
The performance claims hold up reasonably well against last year’s reference unit in Geekbench 6 (yes, I’ve been keeping tabs). Single and multi-core performance registers 19% gains. More impressive, though, is that if you go back two years, the 8 Elite Gen 5 is 65% faster in both tests than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That’s a massive increase in peak performance in just two years — those custom CPU cores really have paid dividends.
Looking at some real handsets, we can see roughly where upcoming Gen 5 phones will sit. Qualcomm’s new chip flies past the capabilities of Google’s Tensor G5, and its multi-core score even leaves Apple’s new A19 Pro chip in the dust — it’s 25% faster. While far more performance than you need for browsing the web, this super-quick multi-core score will come in handy for video editing, gaming, and perhaps even running AI tasks directly on the CPU, especially now that the Snapdragon’s CPU supports SME.
When it comes to single-core brute force, which is admittedly less critical these days, though still plays a crucial role in data-heavy workloads, the custom Arm CPU cores designed by Apple and Qualcomm are now neck and neck (less than 1% difference), offering a solid level-up on last-generation handsets. Google’s previously snappy but aging Arm Cortex-X4 big CPU looks slow by comparison.
20% gains to CPU and GPU put the 8 Elite Gen 5 well out in front.
Qualcomm claims up to 23% better graphics performance and up to 20% lower power consumption for its new Adreno GPU — a combination that promises a potent gaming experience.
We didn’t have time to run every benchmark in our limited session, but Qualcomm provided some 3DMark Unlimited mode (off-screen, 2560×1440) figures for the Gen 5 in advance. Their headline improvement is a bit optimistic compared to last year’s quoted FPS for the same tests: depending on the workload, I calculate improvements between 15% and 18%, which is more modest.
For context, I also converted Qualcomm’s FPS numbers into 3DMark scores to compare directly with retail handsets. However, off-screen tests are always rendered at 2560×1440, while real devices run at varying native resolutions that are often a smidgen lower. Still, Qualcomm’s new chipset is 23% faster than the OnePlus 13 — right on its quoted figure. The new Adreno GPU is clearly very fast.
... continue reading