Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Chipset Review — Specifications and Benchmarks

The Snapdragon 8 Elite marks a genuine turning point in the history of Qualcomm's flagship chips. Announced on 21 October 2024 as the first phone processor to carry the "Elite" name instead of the usual "Gen" sequence, it brings a second generation of the Oryon cores originally developed for laptops (Snapdragon X Elite).

This is no mere marketing move: the chip really is a radical re-engineering of the entire CPU.

It powers flagships such as the Realme GT7 Pro, the Xiaomi 15 series, the OnePlus 13 and the HONOR 600 Pro, and reached Samsung phones in a tuned version under the "for Galaxy" name.

CPU: goodbye to efficiency cores

The generation's biggest change is the complete removal of the small "efficiency cores" (Cortex-A5xx) the market had grown used to for years.

Instead, the Snapdragon 8 Elite uses a fully homogeneous design of eight second-generation Oryon cores: two Prime cores at up to 4.32 GHz and six Performance cores at 3.53 GHz — all strong "big" cores without exception. The Galaxy-exclusive version runs slightly higher (4.47 and 3.63 GHz respectively).

That bold engineering decision means exceptional multitasking, and the results show it clearly: about 3,033–3,184 single-core and 9,271–10,105 multi-core points in Geekbench — a clear distance ahead of the previous generation (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3) and close to Apple's chips in some tests. Note that the Oryon architecture is still built on ARMv8.2-A, not ARMv9 as some wrongly assumed, which denies it some modern accelerators (such as SME) found in Apple's A18 Pro.

GPU: an architectural leap in chip design

The Snapdragon 8 Elite uses an Adreno 830 at roughly 1.1 GHz, built on an entirely new "Sliced Architecture" — a first for Qualcomm's chips. The result is a clear gain in both graphics performance and efficiency: about 19,193 points in Geekbench's OpenCL test and 24,462 in Vulkan, roughly 40% up on the previous generation.

But note: in long stress tests (3DMark Wild Life Extreme), stability dropped to between 46% and 83% depending on the device and its cooling — meaning peak performance may not fully hold through very long gaming sessions.

AI: strong capability without full transparency

The chip carries an upgraded Hexagon NPU supporting on-device personalisation and multimodal processing, capable of running local language models at roughly 20 tokens per second.

As usual, Qualcomm discloses no precise TOPS figure, and at launch some independent tests struggled to benchmark the NPU accurately because of missing driver support.

Memory and connectivity: flagship specifications without compromise

The chip supports LPDDR5X memory and UFS 4.0 storage — the standard for any flagship chip in 2024–2026.

On connectivity, it carries the Snapdragon X80 modem with theoretical speeds up to 10 Gbps down and 3.5 Gbps up, with a dedicated AI accelerator inside the modem itself to improve connection quality.

The stack is completed by Qualcomm FastConnect 7900, supporting Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 at link speeds up to 5.8 Gbps.

Camera: huge capability on paper

The chip supports photo capture up to 320 MP from a single camera — although most actual phones on the market never use that maximum; the figure reflects the platform's theoretical ceiling rather than a typical real-world experience.

Verdict

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is no iterative update — it is a radical re-engineering with an entirely new CPU philosophy (no efficiency cores) and a GPU on a completely different architecture.

The result: exceptional performance in everyday tasks and heavy games, with good power efficiency despite the missing traditional efficiency cores.

The one noticeable flaw is reduced thermal stability in very long gaming sessions — a point to watch depending on each phone's cooling design.