The Snapdragon 8 Elite represents a brand new hope within the cellular subject – it’s the primary chipset in an extended whereas that has customized CPU cores (and isn’t popping out of Apple). The GPU is all customized too and a brand new era besides. And Qualcomm discovered a method to enhance the clock velocity increased than another smartphone chipset by fairly some margin. All of it seems to be nice on paper, let’s see whether or not expectations meet actuality.

Right here we’ll deal with how the 8 Elite compares towards the 2 earlier generations of Snapdragon 8-series. We’re engaged on a separate submit that may pit the Elite towards its chief rival, the Dimensity 9400.

We will likely be utilizing the Realme GT7 Professional for this check

We will likely be utilizing the Realme GT7 Professional for our first spherical of checks for the Snapdragon 8 Elite. And as talked about above, we’ve picked out some Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and eight Gen 2 telephones for comparability. A few of these are gaming telephones, so they need to characterize the very best efficiency of the older chipsets. To that finish, we should always point out that we put the telephone in GT mode (i.e. excessive efficiency mode) for these checks.

Let’s take a look at the CPU first as that’s the largest change this era. It makes use of Oryon cores, two variations of them – two Prime cores and 6 Efficiency cores. These aren’t Cortex cores like in MediaTek and Samsung chipsets, however an in-house design from Qualcomm. Observe that these aren’t the identical Oryon cores that we noticed within the Snapdragon X Elite in laptops, however as a substitute a second era.

2x 4.32GHz Oryon prime cores + 6x Oryon efficiency cores

The 2 Prime cores run at as much as 4.32GHz, which is an insane velocity for a pocketable system. Apple’s A18 Professional broke the 4GHz barrier earlier this yr, however solely simply – it runs at as much as 4.05GHz. The Dimensity 9400’s Cortex-X925 stays beneath 4GHz and runs at 3.63GHz. Outdoors of laptops, the very best clock velocity yow will discover on a cellular system is the Apple M4 within the iPad Professional (2024) tablets at 4.4GHz. However do needless to say these are 11” and 13” tablets and have a a lot simpler time conserving cool.

Geekbench 6, the telephones neatly group themselves into generations. The 8 Elite represents an enormous 31% enhance in multi-core efficiency over one of the best 8 Gen 3 outcomes – and people come from gaming telephones in most effort mode and the overclocked “for Galaxy” chip within the S24 Extremely.

Flipping over to the one core check, that is the place the high-frequency of the Oryon Prime cores ought to shine. And shine it does with a blinding 36% lead over one of the best of the remaining. Trying again one other era, the Oryon posts double the rating of some 8 Gen 2 telephones (Cortex-X3 Prime core) or only a 52% increased rating than one of the best 8 Gen 2 telephone in its high efficiency mode.

Let’s take a look at graphics subsequent. The Adreno 830 is constructed on a brand new structure utilizing a sliced design with devoted reminiscence for every slice. The 830 has three of those slices clocked at as much as 1.1GHz.

Three GPU slices at as much as 1.1GHz, plus devoted reminiscence

As soon as once more, the generational divide is kind of clear. The 3DMark Wild Life Excessive check (working at 2160p) posted a rating 21% increased than one of the best we’ve seen from Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s Adreno 750. Going again to the 8 Gen 2, the distinction is a surprising 68%.

The 8 Elite brings the most recent iteration of hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This tech is gaining floor on cellular after getting established on desktop first. The 2-year previous 8 Gen 2 GPU solely manages round half the rating of the brand new Elite chip. The distinction with the 8 Gen 3 is a tamer 26%, however that’s nonetheless a powerful generational enchancment.

Lastly, AnTuTu tries to mix CPU, GPU, reminiscence and different checks right into a singular rating that represents total efficiency. With all these factored in, there’s much more variability – a well-specced 8 Gen 2 telephone can come near a much less performant 8 Gen 3 telephone. However as soon as once more the Snapdragon 8 Elite – or relatively the Realme GT7 Professional that homes it – leads the older fashions by some margin (round 25%).

This isn’t the top of this story, simply the primary chapter. We nonetheless have extra checks to run, together with the all-important sustained efficiency check. We additionally must run checks with GT mode disabled (we did run a couple of and the telephone didn’t lose a lot efficiency).

We additionally encountered some troubles throughout testing, however this would possibly simply be attributable to teething points – the complete Realme GT7 Professional reveal is scheduled for November 4, though the corporate has confirmed some particulars already and is even letting us run some checks on the evaluation unit we’ve on the workplace.