Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 benchmarks reveal a number of key improvements over the previous generation. But is the fastest chip around?
First, some housekeeping before we leap into the numbers. Qualcomm’s reference device is intended to show off the chip’s real-world potential but may not reflect the results we see in retail products. For instance, we saw notably lower performance from retail Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones compared to Qualcomm’s reference unit last year. Partners may choose to make further optimizations to performance or power consumption as they see fit, so treat this as a ballpark rather than an absolute reference. Secondly, Qualcomm’s reference phone packed 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, a pretty common setup for a flagship handset.
We had time to run Geekbench 5, AnTuTu, and 3DMark Wildlife tests on the handset. Qualcomm also provided expected results for other benchmarks based on its own testing, which we’ve included in a section of this article for your reference. As you’ll see, the results we were able to run closely matched Qualcomm’s claims, so we’re fairly confident its in-house benchmark results are accurate.
The unorthodox quad performance core (2x Cortex-A715 + 2x Cortex-A710) approach clearly pays dividends in multi-core CPU benchmarks, which sees the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 fly past previous generation smartphones and close the gap on Apple’s A16 Bionic. Qualcomm’s reference handset comes in 23% faster in the Geekbench 5 multi-core test than the ROG Phone 6 and outmuscles the Galaxy S22 Ultra by a colossal 51%. That goes to show just the extent of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s overheating issues but also reminds us to be cautious that the results scored by Qualcomm’s reference phone might not translate over to retail handsets.
Geekbench 5 single-core scores are a little more muted in their uplift but still fairly notable.
