Samsung recently unveiled its new S23 series, which is powered by an overclocked version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen2 chip, custom-made with Qualcomm. The new machine is not yet on the market, foreign media revealed that the S24 series also carrying a customized version of the chip appeared to run.
According to GeekBench, the custom-made Snapdragon 8 Gen3 scored 1,930 points in single-core and 6,236 points in multi-core.
This is a big improvement over the custom Snapdragon 8 Gen2, which scored 1,491 points for single core and 5164 points for multi-core.
At the same time, the single-core score of Apple’s A16 chip is 1872 points, and the multi-core score is 5367 points. It can be said that the custom version of Snapdragon 8 Gen3 has completely surpassed Apple’s A16 chip in performance.
According to the news, the custom Snapdragon 8 Gen3 will have a 1+5+2 core configuration, which has an energy efficiency core compared to the 1+4+3 core configuration in the Snapdragon 8 Gen2.
And thanks to Taiwan Semiconductor’s N4P process, its energy efficiency may be about 20% higher than the previous generation. Most importantly, the chip is still in the early stages of debugging, and there may be further improvements in performance in the future.
Samsung and Qualcomm have reportedly reached an agreement to include a custom-made Snapdragon 8 Gne 2 chip in the entire S23. The official name is Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy.
But for the sake of publicity and memorabilia, Samsung has streamlined the code name and called it Snapdragon 8 Gen2 for Galaxy
The Snapdragon 8 Gen2 model, SM8550-AB, is built using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., LTD. 4nm technology. This is also Qualcomm’s first major version iteration of the chip after switching to Taiwan Semiconductor, which has attracted wide attention before its release.
Since previous generations of Snapdragon’s energy efficiency ratio was not ideal, Qualcomm is focusing on improving the efficiency ratio this time, aiming to reduce chip power consumption and temperature. But even so, Qualcomm is still delivering performance gains on the Snapdragon 8 Gen2.
According to the official, the second generation of Snapdragon 8 has 35% CPU performance improvement over the first generation of Snapdragon 8, and 40% energy efficiency improvement. This generation of Snapdragon 8 Gen2 uses a new architecture, 1+2+2+3 architecture brings different performance.
A Kryo Prime based on the X3 super-large core has a core frequency of up to 3.2GHz, four large cores have a frequency of 2.8GHz, and three small cores have a frequency of 2.0GHz.
The new architecture allows Snapdragon 8 Gen2 to find an optimal balance between power consumption and performance, both in the face of high-load scenarios and medium-low load scenarios. It can provide extreme performance, but also bring the best energy efficiency ratio.
In terms of GPU, the Adreno GPU powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen2 also brings ray tracking technology, with 25% performance improvement and 45% energy efficiency improvement.
On the other hand, Samsung’s custom Snapdragon 8 Gen2 overclocked the X3 large core frequency to 3.36GHz on the basis of the regular version, and also increased the GPU quality from 680MHz to 719MHz.
In GeekBench 5, the Samsung S23 series scored 1,583 points in single-core performance, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 in general scored around 1,480 points.
Samsung’s custom chip is already Android’s strongest in terms of single-core performance, and it has surpassed Apple’s A15 chip in terms of multi-core performance.
Therefore, we can see that Samsung S24 series is equipped with a custom version of Snapdragon 8 Gen3 is very likely to be named Snapdragon 8 Gen3 for Galaxy, the same with the basic version in the core configuration is not much different.
The focus on large cores and GPU core frequencies is somewhat similar to Qualcomm’s Plus model launched in the second half of the year, but Samsung exclusively owned it in the first half of the year.
After experiencing the failure of Snapdragon 888 series and Snapdragon 8 series, Qualcomm turned to Taiwan Semiconductor camp with anger. Whether it is Snapdragon 8+ or the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 that has been released now, Qualcomm has shown amazing strength.
After breaking out of its shackles, Qualcomm was able to flex its muscles and make Android users experience performance like never before. The performance exposure of the S24 may be just the beginning. In the future, Qualcomm chips are likely to surpass Apple’s A-Series chips and become the leader of mobile chips in terms of performance.