We compared the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2: solid CPU gains, impressive GPU upgrade

Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 last month, and the first phones with it are starting to roll out. While the vivo X90 Pro+ was the first to be announced, we don’t have a unit to test. But we have an iQOO 11 and have spent quite some time putting it through its paces.

The benchmarks of the new chip have been leaking for some time; however, you can never be sure if there’s anything shady going on with those. With iQOO 11 at hand, we have a market-ready device that we know is up to par.

Our unit has 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, giving the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 a great opportunity to shine. And, boy, does it shine! Keep in mind that this is a generational improvement, less so if you include 8+ Gen 1 (which we did) and still use the TSMC N4 node. What Qualcomm has achieved is pretty impressive.

Before proceeding with the graphics, let us introduce the chip in more detail. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses a mix of ARM cores. Cortex-X3 leads the pack and, based on official data, should be 25% faster than the Cortex-X2 used in Gen 1 chips. This is the guideline for single-threaded performance.

Then there’s a mix of four medium-sized cores. Two are Cortex-A715, which is expected to be 20% faster than the older A710 core. The Gen 2 chip also has two of those A710 cores, so multi-threaded performance is harder to estimate. Based on data from ARM, Qualcomm claims that the CPU is overall 35% faster (compared to the original 8 Gen 1 CPU) and 40% more efficient (which we’re not testing today).

Here is a summary of the chipsets we review today:

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also uses the new Adreno 740 GPU. Qualcomm is secretive on the hardware specs, but there must have been a major change. An interesting thing to note is that the 740 runs at lower clock speeds than the 730 in Gen 1 chips. Even so, Qualcomm claims the new GPU is 25% faster than its predecessor (and 45% more efficient).

If anything, Qualcomm has been conservative with its GPU claims: we’re seeing much greater acceleration even compared to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, which itself was a modest improvement over the original chip from earlier this year (10 % faster). The goal of the Plus chip was energy efficiency. And once that is achieved, Qualcomm may turn its attention to making things faster.

We’ll start with AnTuTu, which is a full system benchmark, to try and get a sense of the overall improvement Gen 2 brings. This isn’t an entirely apples to apples comparison, as Gen 1 chips only support LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage . The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, however, supports faster LPDDR5X DRAM and UFS 4.0 storage, and the iQOO 11 makes full use of them.

This is important to keep in mind: the chipset alone doesn’t determine real-life performance. By adding support for new, faster memory formats, Qualcomm has enabled manufacturers to build faster phones.

We can now take a closer look at the performance of the individual components. Let’s start with Geekbench 5, which measures both single and multi-threaded performance. Remember, the target for single-core improvement is 25% over the Cortex-X2 at the same node and clock speed (i.e. over the implementation seen in the 8+ Gen 1).

The chipset falls short of that mark, but we wouldn’t scoff at an 18% improvement over the 8+ Gen 1. The gap to the 8 Gen 1 chip is even wider, 26%, although it could just run its main core at 3.0 GHz, so no surprises. But the 8+ Gen 1 and 8 Gen 2 cores are clocked the same, so the acceleration comes from the new architecture.

Multi-threaded workloads show a similar 22% improvement over the 8+ Gen 1; the gap to the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is even wider with a speed increase of 33%.

The CPU improvements are solid, if perhaps not groundbreaking. Qualcomm’s hands are tied here as it uses ARM-optimized Cortex CPU cores. Perhaps things will be different when the Nuvia team delivers a mobile CPU design, but that’s the reality we have for 2023.

The Adreno GPUs are all Qualcomm, however, and exceed the +25% target in several tests. Before we get to that, we need to talk about resolution and frame rate. The iQOO 11 features a 1,440 x 3,200px display with up to 120Hz refresh rate (it’s an LTPO4 panel).

However, many phones with Gen 1 chips use FHD+ class displays. To keep the playing field even, we tried two different things: one, setting the iQOO 11 to FHD+ resolution and two, looking at the results offscreen (where the physical resolution doesn’t matter).

The first approach has some problems, i.e. GFXBench Manhattan ES 3.0 hit the 120fps limit, so the GPU was effectively held down by the display. We did not run the old GFXBench tests as they would have encountered the same problem.

That’s a good thing: if it were a game, you’d get a stable 120fps playthrough. Some devices scored higher: gaming phones like the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro and Red Magic 7, which have 165Hz screens. This means that the averages here are misleading as several results are skewed by the display’s fps limit. Off-screen testing circumvents this problem, but there’s another solution: use a more demanding benchmark that doesn’t hit the display’s fps limit.

Let’s stick to FHD+ mode for a while longer as we know that there are many upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phones with FHD+ displays. We’re just looking at the screen tests here.

GFXBench Aztec tests show about a 50% improvement using both the OpenGL ES backend and the newer Vulkan backend. The phone can almost deliver 90fps gameplay at this resolution. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 makes high refresh rate/frame rate gaming possible in FHD+, while the Gen 1 chips let you choose between high resolution and frame rate. Naturally, benchmarks are more demanding than actual games, so we should see a large number of titles playable at 90fps and even 120fps with Gen 2.

Alright, now let’s take a look at raw GPU performance moving over to off-screen testing. These are standardized to a 16:9 aspect ratio (at 1080p or 1440p) and avoid physical limitations such as display refresh rate.

Starting with Aztec at 1440p, we again see about a 50% performance improvement. The gap between Vulkan and OpenGL ES is smaller than Gen 1 chips, but Vulkan still has a slight edge.

3DMark’s Wild Live (Vulkan, 1440p) shows a minor improvement of around 30%. However, Qualcomm was only promising a 25% increase, so the Snapdragon once again exceeds expectations.

Moving on to 1080p tests like Car Chase and Manhattan, the improvements here are minor. These are quite old and may not stress the GPU enough, so the benchmark runs into other bottlenecks.

Conclusion

The new Adreno 740 GPU inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is pretty impressive, and we haven’t even tested what it can do with ray tracing. The new chipset will enable high frame rate gaming in more titles than is currently possible and will allow developers to enable higher quality graphics settings at the same time.

Something we haven’t considered today is the sustained performance, which varies from phone to phone. For the iQOO 11 specifically, our next review will contain information on this, as well as other interesting performance metrics (such as testing UFS 4.0 storage).

There is one last thing to address, Qualcomm apparently has an updated version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. This is just a rumor for now, Ice universe it claims that the Prime core is running at 3.36GHz (up from 3.2GHz) and that the GPU is up to 719MHz (up from 680MHz). Qualcomm hasn’t officially confirmed its existence, but there are hints that suggest the SM8550-AC is real, so let’s close this post with a “continue”.