Qualcomm has another flagship Snapdragon, and thankfully the name is only Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Yes, that is the actual name. Qualcomm has been moving its flagship naming around for years, from the Snapdragon 888 to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, 8 Gen 2 and 8 Gen 3, before deciding that “Elite” was apparently needed in 2024. Now we have “Elite”, “Extreme” and “Gen 6” all sitting in the same name. Qualcomm says Elite is reserved for its most advanced products, while Extreme is now being used for the top chip in its two-chip flagship lineup.
As a background, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 has a 2+3+3 CPU layout with 2 Oryon L super cores at 5Ghz, a trio of Oryon M cores at 4 Ghz and another trio of Oryon M cores at 3.74Ghz. The GPU is the new Adreno 850 which is just an overclocked Adreno 840 from the Elite Gen 5, that runs at 1450MHz, up from 1200MHz that we see on the latter.
Anyway, underneath the ridiculous name is a seriously capable chip. Early testing by Chinese tech channel Geekerwan shows the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 slightly edging Apple’s A20 Pro in Geekbench 7 multi-core performance. The Snapdragon reaches roughly 12,900 points, compared with around 11,800 for the A20 Pro. The lead is not enormous, but it is significant because Qualcomm is now trading blows with Apple at the very top of smartphone CPU performance.
The more interesting part is what happens when power consumption is included. The A20 Pro reaches close to 12,000 points at around 14W, while the Snapdragon pushes towards 13,000 points at roughly 22W. Qualcomm therefore gets the higher peak score, but Apple is doing something similar while consuming substantially less power.
The GPU tells an even more interesting story. In Geekerwan’s 3DMark Steel Nomad Light efficiency test, the A20 Pro reaches about 4,300 points at roughly 12W. The Snapdragon needs around 16W to reach a similar score. So Qualcomm may have edged Apple on CPU performance, but Apple remains ahead on GPU efficiency.
And this is where Apple’s progress becomes worth noting. The company was not always this competitive in graphics. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips had a substantial reputation for mobile GPU performance, while Apple gradually transformed its own silicon into a serious gaming platform. The A17 Pro in 2023 introduced a redesigned GPU with hardware ray tracing, while contemporary testing showed the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 still ahead in several conventional graphics benchmarks.
Now, a few generations later, Apple is producing a chip that can trade CPU blows with Qualcomm while maintaining a substantial efficiency advantage in these early tests. Qualcomm has clearly closed the CPU gap. The naming department, meanwhile, appears to have gone in the opposite direction.
(181) Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6: Early Hands-On! – YouTube
