Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 2: Specs, performance, price

Chipmaker Qualcomm has introduced the newest SoC in its high-end Snapdragon 8 household, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The chip will energy a lot of the flagship Android telephones launched by means of the top of 2023 and all through most of 2024. A variety of manufacturers have dedicated to adopting this chip, and a few, like Xiaomi, have already introduced gadgets powered by it. However what upgrades does the brand new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 deliver to the desk, and the way does it examine to Qualcomm’s former greatest, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2? Let’s break it down.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 2: Specs

With its newest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, Qualcomm is promising a giant efficiency and effectivity enchancment. Right here’s a spec desk that showcases what the corporate has modified between the 2 chip generations.

Qualcomm has made some attention-grabbing modifications to its formulation in comparison with final 12 months, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 including an additional medium core and dropping a little bit core. Though the overall core depend stays the identical at eight, we’re getting a unique 1+5+2 core structure that locations extra emphasis on the center tier. The cores themselves are completely different too. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 consists of Arm’s newest Cortex-X4 huge core, Cortex-A720 medium cores, and Cortex-A520 cores.

Qualcomm has additionally clocked every core increased than final 12 months, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s huge core topping 3.3GHz and three of the medium cores attaining 3.2GHz. For comparability, final 12 months’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s huge core got here shut at 3.2GHz. Nevertheless, all 4 medium cores had been capped at 2.8GHz.

Whereas we are able to’t instantly examine clock speeds between cores from completely different generations, it’s nonetheless signal for efficiency as we’ll focus on within the part on real-world benchmarks under. And regardless of the clock velocity enhance, Qualcomm says it hasn’t compromised on energy draw. The brand new CPU is 20% extra environment friendly than its predecessor.

It’s value noting that Qualcomm’s inclusion of the newest Arm cores signifies that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a 64-bit-only chipset. Put merely, some older Android apps that haven’t been up to date in almost a decade will now not run on the newer SoC. If that issues to you, the last-gen Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will go down because the final flagship chipset to help 32-bit apps.

As is usually the case, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 packs a brand new Adreno GPU. Qualcomm pegs it at 25% quicker vs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s Adreno 740 and guarantees an equal 25% enchancment in effectivity. Ray tracing will get a monstrous 50% efficiency uplift this era, however we haven’t seen many compelling purposes of the know-how on cell but.

The brand new Adreno GPU additionally has a number of different tips up its sleeve, specifically 8K display-out and 240Hz help. Even so, Qualcomm believes that this GPU era represents an evolutionary improve moderately than an outright overhaul.

With the speculation out of the way in which, how does the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 fare in precise checks? We’re now ready to reply that query, due to Qualcomm’s reference machine that showcases the chip at its greatest. We’ve compiled our testing in a devoted Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 benchmark article, however right here’s a fast take a look at the way it compares to its predecessor.

In GeekBench 6, Qualcomm’s newest chip places up a formidable displaying and lives as much as the corporate’s claimed efficiency figures. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 provides a 40% uplift in multi-core and 18% enchancment in single-core vs final 12 months’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in 2023 telephones.

The hole is barely smaller when in comparison with Qualcomm’s machine from final 12 months, which is anticipated as retail gadgets don’t at all times match the reference. Nonetheless, it’s a formidable outcome, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 attaining 31% increased peak efficiency year-over-year. The brand new Cortex-X4 and Cortex-A720 cores appear to dwell as much as their promise.

The profitable streak continues on the GPU aspect. Our 3DMark Wild Life scores give the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 a 40% lead over final 12 months’s chip, which is above and past the claimed 25%. Qualcomm has reportedly alleviated some Vulkan-specific bottlenecks, which ought to assist clarify the elevated efficiency in choose titles. Likewise, ray tracing can turn into a goal for builders now that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 provides 50% higher efficiency.

Nevertheless, it’s not all excellent news. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 begins out robust however nosedives to half of its peak efficiency inside a number of runs of the 3DMark Wildlife Stress Take a look at. Smartphones geared up with final 12 months’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 didn’t fall off fairly as exhausting. The latter SoC’s efficiency merely declined steadily over time. We’ll remember to check this conduct in gaming and different demanding duties as soon as we now have the primary Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 telephones in our palms.

Final 12 months, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 launched some long-awaited options like help for the AV1 video codec, LPDDR5X RAM, UFS 4.0, and Wi-Fi 7. All of those carry over to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 too, together with some extra enhancements. AI has additionally taken heart stage within the tech world and Qualcomm is embracing that development wholesale with its new flagship SoC. Right here’s a fast rundown of the brand new options coming to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3:

• In line with Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s Hexagon NPU provides almost double the efficiency vs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It’s additionally 40% extra environment friendly and has been designed with generative AI in thoughts.
• The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can run giant language fashions (LLMs) on-device. The corporate showcased a chatbot demo powered by Meta’s Llama 2 language mannequin, which is an open-source competitor to ChatGPT.
• Past textual content, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 additionally helps multi-modal fashions that may regionally deal with textual content, picture, and even speech. For instance, the chip can create an AI-generated picture utilizing Steady Diffusion inside a minute. It might probably additionally erase objects in movies, a step past Google’s Magic Eraser which solely works for nonetheless pictures.
• Qualcomm’s AI focus extends to the chip’s picture processing pipeline too, with the chip’s Evening Imaginative and prescient Video able to capturing usable footage in very darkish settings.
• Likewise, a brand new Photograph Enlargement characteristic makes use of generative AI to increase any picture past its authentic boundaries. This can be a characteristic we’ve seen already from the likes of Photoshop Generative Fill, however it’s new on cell.
• The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 introduces help for Dolby HDR picture seize with 10-bit coloration depth.

Whereas these options sound very promising, it’s value noting that their implementation is completely as much as machine makers. Primarily based on previous releases, we all know that solely a small subset of Snapdragon 8 sequence’ options find yourself in precise shopper gadgets yearly. Should you’re contemplating an improve, we’d suggest testing a evaluation or two beforehand.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powers most of the greatest Android smartphones launched in 2023. We’ve virtually universally praised it on account of its excellent efficiency and effectivity. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 seems like a worthy successor in nearly each space. Having mentioned that, we now have some lingering questions on sustained efficiency, given our early check outcomes. In any case, that is an space the place Android SoCs have struggled prior to now.

Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 on October 24, 2023. It didn’t take lengthy for the primary cellphone sporting the chipset to hit the market within the type of the Xiaomi 14 sequence, albeit solely in China for now. The SoC is anticipated to energy many high-end smartphones all through 2024, together with huge names like Samsung’s Galaxy S24 household.

Concurrently, nevertheless, we don’t anticipate the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 to vanish simply but. Qualcomm’s previous-gen SoCs have usually made a comeback later of their life cycles in higher mid-range and sub-flagship smartphones. The identical ought to maintain true for this last-gen chip too. And contemplating the quantity of efficiency on supply, it’s undoubtedly an incredible selection even when it’s now not the most effective.

So with that in thoughts, which SoC must you prioritize in your subsequent smartphone? Given the large efficiency uplift, we’d say the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 does eke out a win vs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Nevertheless, that equation might change barely if you could find deep reductions on a smartphone toting the older SoC.