This year’s chip showdown is going to be a brutal one, and the entries from Qualcomm and MediaTek will certainly be going for each other’s throats in a way that we’ve likely never seen before since they’ve both existed. Qualcomm’s throne is at stake this time around.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is expected to launch in October, and that’s when we’ll be able to know absolutely everything about it. However, before that point comes by, we have gotten a leak benchmarking the new chip and it gives us a good idea of the performance boost it’ll bring over its predecessor.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Geekbench Scores Show A Nearly 35% Boost In Single-Core Performance
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be the first smartphone chip produced by Qualcomm built on a 3nm process, which tends to allow for a more efficient chip, without necessarily needing to compromise on the power that it brings to the table. It’s exciting times, and I’ve been very eager to see how it’ll perform.
Thanks to Digital Chat Station on Weibo, we’ve been able to get our first-ever look at the performance of the chip via Geekbench benchmarks. First off, understand that this chip is also the first smartphone unit to run Qualcomm’s own Oryon CPU architecture, with one cluster of two high-powered 4.09 GHz cores and a second cluster of six 2.78 GHz cores.
With that setup, it’s no surprise that you get a single-core score of 2,884 and a multi-core score of 8,840. Needless to say, that’s the highest Geekbench score of any Android chip ever released. In fact, compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the S24 Ultra, that’s a 34% boost in single-core performance and a 31.5% boost in multi-core performance. You’ll definitely notice that.
The Full-Production Chip Will Likely Be Even More Capable
The craziest part is that the scores we’ve seen might not even be the final form of the upcoming chip. It is a pre-production chip likely running on pre-production software without all of its kinks ironed out.
That could mean that by the time October comes around, the benchmarks could be higher than what we see here. This year’s chip race is looking to be extremely exciting from the early looks of things.
Now that we’ve gotten an early look at the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4’s performance, the question is whether the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 will be able to compare to it. We know that the Taiwanese company is also planning to release its first 3nm chip, so they’ll be comparable on that basis alone, but will they be bringing enough power to beat what we’ve just seen?
MediaTek recently released the Dimensity 9300+, which is the fastest chip running in any Android device at the moment based on Geekbench numbers (Qualcomm didn’t release a mid-cycle competitor, giving MediaTek the throne for some time). It hits a 2,302 single-core score and 7,547 on its multi-core benchmark.
There’s still a sizable gap from there to the upcoming Snapdragon, but if anyone can bridge it, it’ll be MediaTek.
