Qualcomm has officially announced its latest flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, but how does it compare to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3?
The Elite branding has quickly become associated with Qualcomm’s high-end chipsets and the Snapdragon 8 Elite is no exception. It also marks a shift from the Snapdragon 8 Gen name that was first introduced in 2021, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 being the most recent addition to that list in 2023 (until now).
Keep reading to learn how the brand-new Snapdragon 8 Elite compares to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is faster
As always, you can expect a performance boost from Qualcomm’s newest flagship mobile chipset.
This year, that increased CPU performance is unlocked by the same Oryon CPU architecture featured in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite laptop chipset.
The CPU includes two incredibly fast 4.32GHz Prime Cores, as well as six new 3.53Ghz Performance Cores with the latter replacing the Efficiency Cores by offering a better combination of performance and power. There’s also Instant Wake, allowing the cores to execute instructions immediately without lag.
The CPU in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 also featured 8 cores, but this consisted of just one Prime Core, six Performance Cores and two of the now defunct Efficiency Cores. All-in-all, you can expect a faster experience from the Snapdragon 8 Elite compared to its predecessor.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite offers stronger gaming performance
Gaming is the area that will see the most benefit from the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
The Adreno GPU features sliced architecture for the first time, enabling higher clock speeds, 40% higher framerates, 40% better efficiency and improved Ray Tracing compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This means smoother gameplay and longer gaming sessions by up to 2.5 hours.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite also offers support for Unreal Engine’s Chaos Engine and Nanite solution, with the latter delivering more realistic textures and lighting in 3D environments.
GRID Legends will also offer Adaptive Performance Engine 4.0 support for Snapdragon 8 Elite users, improving device efficiency.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite has an upgraded AI engine
No flagship chipset can launch this year without mentioning AI and the Snapdragon 8 Elite is no exception.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was packed with AI innovations thanks to the Hexagon NPU, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite takes this a step further with the addition of new NPU Cores for a 45% boost in AI performance.
The AI Engine also includes support from the new Oryon CPU, with Oryon helping to initiate workloads and take the heavy lifting while the AI Engine focuses on AI tasks.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite also allows for more tokens to be accepted, meaning you can upload larger documents, photos, audio files and more. Your AI assistant can also see through your camera to answer questions about objects entirely on-device.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite brings new camera features
Finally, the Snapdragon 8 Elite marks the addition of some useful camera features, with many of these unsurprisingly powered by AI.
This includes a brand-new AI ISP designed to work alongside the Hexagon NPU. This will power the autofocus, auto white balance and auto exposure, and allow you to record from three 48-megapixel sensors at once at up to 30fps.
Qualcomm is also bringing several AI features that were previously only available in the cloud to the device. This means they’ll work faster and with better privacy.
Early verdict
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is Qualcomm’s latest flagship mobile chipset, packed with improvements over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That said, the 8 Gen 3 is by no means outdated and is currently powering some of the best smartphones around.
You’ll have to wait for our first reviews of Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered phones to arrive to see how the two chipsets truly compare in our benchmarking tests.
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