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Snapdragon 8 Elite vs Snapdragon 8s Gen 3: How do the chipsets compare?
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Qualcomm recently announced its latest top-end mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Not only does the Snapdragon 8 Elite have a new name, marking the company’s shift away from its usual branding, but it’s also packed with exciting upgrades.
Keep reading to learn how the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite compares to the mid-rangeSnapdragon 8s Gen 3.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite has a faster CPU
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is faster than the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.
This isn’t massively surprising as the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is a mid-range chipset designed to offer speeds somewhere in between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a high-end chipset and an update on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, so it makes sense that the 8 Elite would be more powerful.
Not only is the Snapdragon 8 Elite built on a 3nm process instead of the usual 4nm, but it also swaps out the Kryo CPU in the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 for the newer Oryon CPU featured in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite laptop chips.
This results in clock speeds of up to 4.32 Ghz from the 8 Elite, beating the 3 Ghz clock speeds achieved by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite offers stronger gaming performance
The Adreno GPU has also seen a handful of upgrades, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite delivering a major performance boost for gamers.
The GPU in the 8 Elite features sliced architecture for the first time, resulting in higher clock speeds, 40% higher framerates, 40% better efficiency and improvedRay Tracingcompared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Considering the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 falls slightly behind the 8 Gen 3, you can expect an even more noticeable difference between the mid-range chipset and the latest flagship when it comes to both the lengths of your gaming sessions and how smooth they appear.
That said, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is still packed with Snapdragon Elite Gaming features, allowing gamers to experience sharp resolutions and ray-traced graphics on mid-range devices.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite supports 8K video
The Snapdragon 8 Elite also has the upper hand when it comes to its cameras – particularly regarding video capture.
The flagship chipset can now snap 320-megapixel images with a single camera and record 8K video at up to 60fps. There’s also support for slow-motion video capture in 1080p at up to 480fps and you can record from three 48-megapixel sensors at once at 30fps.
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, on the other hand, is capable of taking 200-megapixel photos using a single camera and capturing 4K video at up to 60fps. There’s also 1080p slow-motion support but this is limited to 240fps, or record from three 36-megapixel sensors at once at 30fps.
The same goes for video playback, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite capable of displaying 8K/60fps video, while the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is limited to 4K/120fps.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers faster download speeds
The Snapdragon 8 Elite takes advantage of a new cellular modem, the Snapdragon X80 5G Modem-RF System. This modem offers peak upload speeds of 3.5 Gbps and download speeds of 10 Gbps.
The Snapdragon X70 5G Modem-RF System in the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 offers the same 3.5 Gbps upload speeds, but slower download speeds at 6.5 Gbps.
Early verdict
If you’re looking for the best possible performance from a Snapdragon chip, a Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered smartphone is the obvious choice. That said, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 packs plenty of power and features in a more, affordable mid-range package.
You’ll have to wait for our first review featuring the Snapdragon 8 Elite to learn how these two chipsets measure up in our benchmarking tests.
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Hannah joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer in 2019 after graduating with a degree in English from Royal Holloway, University of London. She’s also worked and studied in the US, holding positions …
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
