Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit is scheduled to kick off on September 23, so it was only a matter of time before its top-tier chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2, started showing up in benchmark databases. After seemingly obtaining a massive 3.8 million score in AnTuTu, making it 40.7 percent higher than the fastest Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered flagship on the app’s list, the new SoC was recently spotted running in Samsung’s ultra-slim smartphone, the Galaxy S26 Edge, securing phenomenal results. However, those figures could have been better, as discussed below.
A closer look at the clock speeds shows that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2’s performance cores were running at 4.00 GHz; a bigger difference would be seen when the same cores run at 4.74 GHz sustained
The Galaxy S26 Edge, featuring the model number SM-S947U, obtains single-core and multi-core scores of 3,393 and 11,515, respectively, while running the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2. As you can tell from the benchmark, the device had Android 16 installed and sports the ‘2 + 6’ CPU cluster like the Snapdragon 8 Elite, with its performance cores rated to operate at 4.74 GHz and the efficiency cores clocked at 3.63 GHz. These increases were likely possible thanks to Qualcomm’s move to TSMC’s third-generation 3nm process, also known as ‘N3P,’ bringing improved efficiency, which ultimately allowed the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 to run at higher frequencies.
The Galaxy S26 Edge also features 12 GB of RAM, and for a sleek flagship, these single-threaded and multi-threaded figures would be regarded as nothing short of impressive. However, it should be noted that the six performance cores were not running at their default clock speeds. Thanks to Abhishek Yadav, who provided an in-depth look at the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2’s frequencies, the Galaxy S26 Edge appears to be running the performance cores only at 4.00 GHz. Whether this was a deliberate move on Samsung’s or Qualcomm’s part, we cannot confirm.
We should also mention that Geekbench 6 is not designed for measuring sustained performance, meaning that the scores you see above are what the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 is capable of achieving in a short amount of time and are not indicative of thermal throttling. Then again, historically, Samsung’s devices have had a habit of achieving lower scores on Geekbench 6 than their competitors, despite using a slightly more powerful Snapdragon chipset. Hopefully, we will see some improvements here—perhaps when the Galaxy S26 Ultra gets spotted on the same benchmark.
News Source: Geekbench
