Robert Triggs / Android Authority
I was reasonably impressed when benchmarking my first Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 handset. The Nubia REDMAGIC 11 Pro I tested performs within just a few percentage points of Qualcomm’s best-case reference model from its launch event, suggesting the new Snapdragon will retain the performance crown for another year.
However, there’s one significant caveat — graphics stress tests hit blistering highs of 56°C to maintain peak performance over time. That’s far too hot to hold the phone comfortably. The only reason the REDMAGIC didn’t buckle under such extreme heat is its elaborate liquid cooling system and fan setup.
But what happens to phones that don’t feature such an elaborate cooling setup? Well, I’ve run the new realme GT8 Pro through the same tests to see how it stacks up.
First, the phone performs reasonably well in GeekBench 6. However, the realme GT8 Pro’s multi-core performance is approximately 12.4% slower than Qualcomm’s best-case setup, a significant deficit; however, single-core results are just 5.3% behind. That makes it slightly slower than the REDMAGIC 11 Pro as well. But let’s look at 3DMark’s graphics stress tests to see how heat stacks up.
Thankfully, realme is more conservative than Nubia in terms of temperatures (at least without boost mode enabled), capping the phone at 44.1°C across all of our tests. Still, that’s hotter than most mainstream flagships, which typically aim to stay closer to 40°C for handheld comfort.
Temperature throttling can significantly reduce 8 Elite Gen 5 performance.
To stay within that temperature range, the GT8 Pro sacrifices a significant portion of its performance — dropping to just 28.6% of its peak in the demanding Solar Bay test and 38.9% in the older Wildlife benchmark. No matter how you slice it, that’s a major concern, especially compared to last year’s model, which never dropped more than 70% of its performance in these tests, albeit at the expense of higher temperatures. Although we initially had to trick the GT7 Pro into completing the test via a stealth benchmark, so it’s not like overheating is a new issue here.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take more than four to six stress-test runs for the realme GT8 Pro to fall behind the GT7 Pro, resulting in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 performing worse than its predecessor under sustained load. That’s undoubtedly bad for realme’s flagship, but also concerning for other handsets that’ll be sporting Qualcomm’s latest silicon.
Another hot Snapdragon?
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