Performance rumors surrounding the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 suggest that Qualcomm's first smartphone SoC (with the company's custom cores) will be faster than Apple's M2, but only on the GPU side, and that's in one benchmark. However, we now have Geekbench 6 single-core and multi-core that are said to be from the same chipset, and not only do the scores show it to be faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but its multi-threaded results are also on par with the M3. At the same time, the AnTuTu benchmark results have also been shared, let’s take a closer look.
First, let’s look at the test results of Geekbench6. @negativeonehero shared on X that the single-core and multi-core scores of Snapdragon 8Gen4 are 2845 points and 10628 points respectively. Compared with Snapdragon 8Gen3, which scored 7249 points when running in Galaxy S24 Ultra, Snapdragon 8Gen4 is 46% faster in multi-threaded tests and is also significantly faster in single-core results.
It is said that one of the reasons why Snapdragon 8Gen4 can achieve such high scores despite its "2+6" structure is that the SoC is rumored to be only equipped with the "Phoenix" performance core. It seems that, like Dimensity9300, Snapdragon 8Gen4 will not use any efficiency cores, which will improve its multi-core performance, but at the expense of power consumption.
Fortunately, the SoC is said to be mass-produced on TSMC's 3nm "N3E", so the increased efficiency of this lithography technology could offset the disadvantages of using only performance cores as part of a CPU cluster. Compare that to Apple's M3, which was barely faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in both single-core and multi-core scores, suggesting that Qualcomm's decision to move to a custom CPU design was the right one all along, even if it meant phone makers had to pay a higher price than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
There is no doubt that these data represent the highest level of Android smartphone chipsets. The performance gap with Apple's A series has finally narrowed, which means that competition in this field has become more intense, but there are still many questions that have not been answered. For example, no power consumption metrics are provided, so even if the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 exceeds 10,000 points in Geekbench6's multi-core test, we have to know what its power consumption is.
Another problem we discovered is that the codename "Lahaina" mentioned in the AnTuTu benchmark results on the left is the codename of Snapdragon 888, while the codename of Snapdragon 8Gen4 is "Pakala". Assuming no explanation was provided, we have to conclude that the scores were edited and therefore potentially fake. According to a tipster, the test frequency of Snapdragon 8Gen4 is 4.00GHz, so these single-core and multi-core running scores may also be based on the above clock frequency.