Tuesday, October 24, 2023, saw the release of Qualcomm’s most recent smartphone SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which according to benchmark tests performs on par with or better than Apple’s A17 Bionic.
GSMArena subjected the chip to a battery of benchmark tests and contrasted its performance with that of the A17 Bionic-powered iPhone 15 Pro Max.
In the single-core scoring category on GeekBench 6, the A17 Bionic scored 2,926 points, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 managed a score of 2,329, falling short of Apple’s chip.
Multi-core AnTuTu 10 and GeekBench 6 results, however, show a different story.
In GeekBench 6 multi-core testing, the Qualcomm chip received a score of 7,501, whereas the A17 Bionic-powered iPhone 15 Pro Max received a score of 7,237.
In AnTuTu testing, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 completely outperformed Apple’s A17 Bionic, scoring 2,139,281, compared to 1,487,203 for the Apple chip.
AnTuTu is a comprehensive benchmark that can be used to test the CPU, GPU, memory, and storage of a device.
With one large “Prime core,” five medium-sized “Performance cores,” and two smaller “Efficiency cores, the new Qualcomm chip has a 1:5:2 core arrangement.
A 3.3GHz Arm Cortex X4 powers the large core. Qualcomm did not provide model numbers for any additional CPU cores.
It did state, though, that two of the five medium cores operate at 3.0GHz, and three of the five operate at 3.2GHz. Operating at 2.3GHz are the smaller efficiency cores.
There are one large “Prime” core, five medium “Performance” cores, and two small “Efficiency” cores in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s 1:5:2 core arrangement.
The business said that the large core is a 3.3GHz Arm Cortex X4, but it did not provide the model numbers of any other CPU cores.
The 4nm process used to build the chip allows Qualcomm to 30% faster and 20% more efficient CPU and 25% faster and 25% more efficient GPU performance.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is already present in powerful flagship smartphones; Xiaomi debuted the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Xiaomi 14 Pro in late October 2023.
The combination of the chip and storage options is 12GB RAM + 256GB or 16GB RAM + 512GB or 1TB.
