Image: Chris Martin / Foundry
In Summary
- The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is officially the fastest mobile chip we have ever evaluated.
- It outperforms the iPhone 17 Pro by a margin exceeding 30%.
- Performance improvements appear to be even greater than Qualcommās own claims.
Qualcomm has unveiled its latest flagship smartphone processor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, during the Snapdragon Summit. Benchmarks reveal that this chip not only surpasses Appleās A19 Pro, found in the iPhone 17 Pro, but does so convincingly.
Lauded as the āfastest mobile CPU in the world,ā the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 lives up to its moniker based on our extensive testing.
Despite Appleās iPhones generally performing well in select tests, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 showcases significant dominance, as evidenced by the results presented below.
Although our testing was conducted using a reference design phone that will not be commercially available, it provides valuable insights into the performance spectators can expect from devices equipped with this chip.
The reference design was not overclocked, and testing was carried out in a standard conference room setting, devoid of specialized conditions that could skew results. Multiple tests were run to ensure accuracy in scoring.
In parallel, MediaTek has announced its competitor, the Dimensity 9500, but we have not yet benchmarked this processor for a direct comparison.
Chris Martin / Foundry
Geekbench 6 Results
We primarily utilized Geekbench 6 in our evaluations, given its long-standing reliability in benchmarking and its lower susceptibility to variances from other hardware components such as the display.
Achieving scores exceeding 12,000, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is officially the most powerful chip we have tested to date. Comparatively, the iPhone 17 Pro averaged in the 9,000 range under identical testing conditions in the same environment.
Not only did the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 make significant strides over its predecessor, but it also outperformed the overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite found in the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Upon analyzing the data, we discovered that this new chip is approximately 30.6% faster than Appleās A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro and outpaces the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy by about 31%. This exceeds Qualcommās initial claim of a mere 20% boost in CPU performance.
While single-core performance metrics were less impressive, they hold less significance overall. The reference design model underwent testing with a substantial 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM; however, this substantial memory boost does not significantly influence Geekbench scores compared to prior versions.
Additional Benchmarking Tests
In addition to Geekbench 6, we conducted several other performance evaluations on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, although these tests are deemed less critical due to the nature of the reference design device used.
An impressive score of 4,292,032 was recorded in AnTuTu, with Qualcomm stating that the chip can achieve up to 4.5 million.
In PCMark Work 3.0 Performance, it averaged a commendable 23,811, while in GFXBench, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 achieved a remarkable 102 fps and 115 fps for demanding tests in Aztec High using Open and Vulkan APIs, respectively.
Although these numbers stem from a reference design scenario, they provide a compelling glimpse into the performance capabilities we anticipate from upcoming devices featuring the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, including models from the Xiaomi 17 series and the Samsung Galaxy S26 series.
Qualcomm covered my travel expenses, offering airfare and meals to attend their Snapdragon Technology Summit. The company did not influence or control the content produced by Tech Advisor.
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