Snapdragon 8 Elite: The Performance King, A New Era for Mobile Platforms

Snapdragon 8 Elite: The Performance King, A New Era for Mobile PlatformsThis year's upgrade to Qualcomm's latest generation of flagship mobile platforms may be the biggest in recent years, so its name has been changed from the original "Snapdragon 8 Gen4" to the brand new Snapdragon 8 Elite, translated as Snapdragon 8 Elite in Chinese. On the one hand, it echoes and unifies with the Snapdragon X Elite on the PC platform; on the other hand, this year's Snapdragon 8 has undergone a significant change in architecture and performance, worthy of the name "Elite," which means supreme

Snapdragon 8 Elite: The Performance King, A New Era for Mobile Platforms

This year's upgrade to Qualcomm's latest generation of flagship mobile platforms may be the biggest in recent years, so its name has been changed from the original "Snapdragon 8 Gen4" to the brand new Snapdragon 8 Elite, translated as Snapdragon 8 Elite in Chinese. On the one hand, it echoes and unifies with the Snapdragon X Elite on the PC platform; on the other hand, this year's Snapdragon 8 has undergone a significant change in architecture and performance, worthy of the name "Elite," which means supreme.

First, the conclusion: The Snapdragon 8 Elite Reference Design Engineering Machine (QRD) is currently the most powerful in terms of performance, bar none. Without further ado, let's present our test data!

Snapdragon 8 Elite Test Data Analysis

AnTuTu V10 surpasses 3 million points. This is the only phone we have tested so far to break the 3 million mark. We ran AnTuTu benchmark three times, the highest score was 3.06 million points as shown in the table, the other two times were over 3.04 million. This score is 36% higher than the 2.2 million points of the previous generation. Geekbench single-core surpasses 3200, multi-core breaks the 10,000 point mark. Currently, only the Apple iPhone 16 series with the six-core A17 and A17 Pro chips can compete in single-core performance, while the Snapdragon 8 Elite is in a league of its own when it comes to multi-core performance. As for other test software scores, it is simply at the top tier level in the industry.

In terms of game testing, the Snapdragon 8 Elite basically runs at full frame rate throughout. Considering the differences in game operations and other factors, the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Dimensity 9400 (both engineering machines) are neck and neck in game performance, and ultimately it also depends on the OEM's tuning on the final phone. Special note: The version of Genshin Impact (5.1.0_27118081) we used for testing had a bug, which resulted in a slight drop in frame rate every 30 seconds, regardless of the hardware platform, potentially affecting the final frame rate score. Fortunately, this issue, or rather, regret, will be left until the OEM's final phone featuring the Snapdragon 8 Elite is released, and we will test it again.

The above performance data was measured on the Snapdragon 8 Elite's QRD reference design engineering machine, which is closer to the OEM's final retail phone than previous QRDs, except maybe in terms of imaging, battery, and cooling, which may not be as crazy stacked as the retail model. We also look forward to how ROG, Red Magic, and other gaming phone brands will "squeeze out" the performance limits of the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Similarly, thanks to the TSMC N3E process technology, the energy efficiency and power consumption of the Snapdragon 8 Elite are quite stable this time around. PConline has also contacted OEMs, and it is currently understood that the Snapdragon 8 Elite is performing very well in terms of performance and power consumption, and there is not much pressure on optimization. OEMs are focusing more on optimizing features such as imaging and AI.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Specification Analysis

No longer the Arm public version of the Cortex architecture CPU, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the first to introduce its self-developed Oryon CPU on the mobile platform. This CPU is not unfamiliar, as it has been used in the Snapdragon X Elite PC platform, and its performance and energy efficiency have been recognized by the market and users. We tested the Snapdragon 8 Elite's Geekbench score of over 3200 in single-core performance, which is similar to that of the Snapdragon X Elite (Linux), and the highest main frequency is also around 4.3GHz, which indicates that the Oryon CPU on these two platforms is not 100% identical in technical specifications, but it can be speculated that they are of the same origin!

Qualcomm is about to break through the bottom layer of the CPU architecture between PC and mobile platforms, similar to Apple's M series and A series, which is a balanced approach based on performance and development costs. Targeting the application scenario characteristics of mobile platforms, the Snapdragon 8 Elite's CPU architecture has become a "2+6" combination, no longer the "1+5+2" of the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen3, i.e., a super-large core with a number of large and small cores. The Snapdragon 8 Elite's "2+6" CPU consists of two super cores (Prime, sharing 12MB of L2 cache) with a clock speed of up to 4.32GHz, plus six performance cores (Performance, sharing 12MB of L2 cache) with a clock speed of up to 3.53GHz, supporting up to 5.3GHz LPDDR5x. Judging from the single-core performance and frequency, it can be speculated that only these two super cores are close to the cores of the Snapdragon X Elite, after all, even though the Snapdragon 8 Elite uses the more advanced TSMC N3E process technology to reduce power consumption, it is simply impossible for a phone's small body to withstand the full-blooded 12-core Snapdragon X Elite's power consumption and heat dissipation pressure, so the Snapdragon 8 Elite focuses more on energy efficiency.

Now that we have talked about the CPU, let's move on to the GPU. The Qualcomm Adreno GPU on the Snapdragon 8 Elite has undergone a huge change, its three GPU Slices can simultaneously reach a high frequency of 1.1GHz, and there is also a 12MB cache dedicated to the GPU, used for the transmission of graphics data, equivalent to dedicated VRAM on a PC graphics card. The overall performance of the Adreno GPU has been increased by 40%, power consumption has been reduced by 40%, and ray tracing performance has been increased by 35%. The Snapdragon 8 Elite also supports Adreno Motion Engine 2.0, which can interpolate frames based on image and game vectors, achieving game performance from 45 frames to 90 frames, and from 60 frames to 120 frames. This chip platform-level native frame interpolation feature is primarily aimed at OEMs, and we look forward to seeing more and more flagship phones supporting practical game frame interpolation features in the future.

Finally, let's briefly introduce the AI aspect. The Qualcomm AI Engine on the Snapdragon 8 Elite comes with a framework for a personal assistant to help its own OEMs achieve more powerful and practical AI assistants, its Hexagon NPU has 45% improved AI performance, with overall energy efficiency also increasing by 45%, providing more possibilities for the continued internal competition of AI features on flagship phones.

Summary

In terms of experience, this generation of Snapdragon 8 Elite is a huge leap in performance, undeniably number one. In terms of energy efficiency, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is also performing well, with low power consumption and little heat, quite stable! The Snapdragon 8 Elite has already built a broad stage for everyone, and now it's time for Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and other brands to put on a spectacular show.