Qualcomm this week unveiled the next flagship chip for Android, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Just on paper, the chip already looking compelling, but some early Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 benchmarks show that the new chip even rivals Apple’s 3nm chip in the iPhone 15 Pro.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a 4nm chipset built using a 1+5+2 core layout, headlined by a main Cortex-X4 core, and backed up by five performance cores (Cortex-A720) and two efficiency cores (Cortex-A520). Qualcomm claims the chip’s raw power is up 30% faster and significantly more power efficient. There’s also a heavy AI focus with the Hexagon NPU which is said to be 98% faster and enables impressive on-device models such as stable diffusion and photo expansion.
But, how does the chip compare? Qualcomm shared a brief video (via Sparrows News) which shows the benchmark results on their own.
GSMArena, meanwhile, shows these results in context.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, in a multi-core test in Geekbench 6, scored 7,501, up from the iPhone 15 Pro Max and its Apple A17 Pro (a 3nm chip) which scored 7,237. In a single-core test, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 fell about 600 points short of Apple’s 2,926 score, but still gained 400 points over last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Qualcomm also scored a huge win on AnTuTu’s benchmark, with a score of 2,139,281, up from Apple’s 1,487,203.
Effectively, Qualcomm is very much now playing the same game as Apple with its flagship chip, which is doubly impressive as Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a 4nm chip, where the A17 Pro is a 3nm chip.
We generally don’t talk about benchmarks all that often because, typically speaking, they’re not reflective of real-life usage. However, in the case of directly comparing two chips, not two devices, it’s certainly a helpful way to get an idea of the difference. But, obviously, just because Qualcomm hit a higher number doesn’t necessarily mean that an Android phone packing this chip will be objectively better than the iPhone. For that, we’ll have to wait and see how these chips do when they actually hit the market over the months to come.
And, for those curious, Google’s Tensor G3 didn’t really put up much of a fight here, scoring well behind both Qualcomm and Apple flagships, and barely keeping up with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
More on Qualcomm:
- Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has 1+5+2 core config, on-device gen AI, & ‘Seamless’ continuity
- Qualcomm S7 and S7 Pro Gen 1 bring better audio over Wi-Fi
- Google and Qualcomm working on RISC-V chip for Wear OS
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