After months of leaks and rumors, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is finally here, and it’s clearly a big leap over last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. More importantly, it outperforms its biggest rivals, the Apple A19 Pro and Dimensity 9500, in early benchmark figures.
Built on a 3nm process, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is touted as the “world’s fastest mobile system-on-a-chip” by Qualcomm, and the benchmark numbers mostly tell the same thing. For the benchmark comparison, we’re using the first-party benchmark numbers as shared by Notebookcheck.
Note that the benchmark figures have been obtained from a reference device, which has a high-end setup like a massive 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM, 1TB UFS4.1 storage, and a large 6.8-inch 3,200×1,440 AMOLED LTPO display. Retail handsets might not perform as well as they prioritize battery life, optimal temperature, and other features over raw performance.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 benchmarks
Geekbench Score
Geekbench 6 (single core)
On Geekbench 6, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 gets about 20% higher single-core score over last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. It also beats the Dimensity 9500 by a 10% margin, but there’s a close matchup with Apple’s powerful A19 Pro. The 8 Elite Gen 5 is slightly behind Apple’s A19 Pro, although the gap is now very thin. The Tensor G5, with a single-core score of 2,316, isn’t a trouble to other chips on the list.
So, in terms of single-core performance on Geekbench, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 easily outperforms most of its rivals, except for the Apple A19 Pro, which is as good as Qualcomm’s. However, the multi-core CPU performance is a whole different story.
| Geekbench 6 | Single core score |
|---|---|
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (reference device) | 3,831 |
| Snapdragon 8 Elite (Galaxy S25 Ultra) | 3,179 |
| Apple A19 Pro (iPhone 17 Pro Max) | 3,914 |
| Tensor G5 (Pixel 10 Pro XL) | 2,316 |
| Dimensity 9500 (Vivo X300 Pro) | 3,471 |
Geekbench 6 (multi core)
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 achieves over 12,000 points in multi-core performance on Geekbench, leaving all other smartphone chips in the dust. This means more than 20% boost for the latest Snapdragon flagship compared to the A19 Pro and Dimensity 9500 when it comes to tasks that utilize multiple cores. The Tensor G5 disappoints again, scoring just 6,452, almost half of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
| Geekbench 6 | Multi core score |
|---|---|
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (reference device) | 12,383 |
| Snapdragon 8 Elite (Galaxy S25 Ultra) | 10,114 |
| Apple A19 Pro (iPhone 17 Pro Max) | 10,125 |
| Tensor G5 (Pixel 10 Pro XL) | 6,452 |
| Dimensity 9500 (Vivo X300 Pro) | 10,269 |
AnTuTu score
The reference device, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, scores over 4.3 million points on the AnTuTu benchmark. Other than this, only the Dimension 9500 could reach the 4 million territory, with a total score of 4,011,932.
The Apple A19 Pro barely gets past last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, while the Tensor G5 struggles at 1.4 million.
| AnTuTu score | |
|---|---|
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (reference device) | 4,309,384 |
| Snapdragon 8 Elite (Galaxy S25 Ultra) | 2,209,476 |
| Apple A19 Pro (iPhone 17 Pro Max) | 2,308,323 |
| Tensor G5 (Pixel 10 Pro XL) | 1,429,557 |
| Dimensity 9500 (Vivo X300 Pro) | 4,011,932 |
Please note that AnTuTu uses different test methods for Android and iOS platforms. This is one of the major reasons you’re seeing a huge difference in the scores here.
3DMark Wild Life Extreme Score
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 also shines in the 3DMark test, thanks to architectural upgrades and software enhancements. In the Wild Life Extreme test, it scores 8,329 points, while the A19 Pro can’t get past the 6,000 mark. The Snapdragon 8 Elite, surprisingly, performs better than Apple’s fastest chipset, while the Tensor G5 continues to struggle by a significant margin.
| AnTuTu score | |
|---|---|
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (reference device) | 8,329 |
| Snapdragon 8 Elite (Galaxy S25 Ultra) | 6,914 |
| Apple A19 Pro (iPhone 17 Pro Max) | 5,982 |
| Tensor G5 (Pixel 10 Pro XL) | 3,261 |
| Dimensity 9500 (reference device) | 8,251 |
For the Dimensity 9500, we obtained the 3DMark benchmark numbers from the test conducted by Xiaobai’s Tech Reviews. Since no device with this chip has been released yet, the test was likely carried out on a reference device. For the Vivo X300 Pro, we used the leaked benchmark figures from Geekbench, while the AnTuTu score was recently revealed by the company itself.
| SD 8 Elite Gen 5 | Apple A19 Pro | Dimensity 9500 | Tensor G5 | |
| Announced | September 2025 | September 2025 | September 2025 | August 2025 |
| Process node | 3nm (TSMC) | 3nm (TSMC) | 3nm (TSMC) | 3nm (TSMC) |
| CPU cores | 8-core CPU | 6-core CPU | 8-core CPU | 8-core CPU |
| CPU config | 2x 4.61 GHz — Oryon (3rd gen) 6x 3.63 GHz — Oryon (3rd gen) | 2x 4.26 GHz — Performance cores 4x 2.60 GHz — Efficiency cores | 1x 4.21 GHz — C1-Ultra 3x 3.5 GHz — C1-Premium 4x 2.7 GHz — C1-Pro | 1x 3.78 GHz — Cortex-X4 5x 3.05 GHz — Cortex-A725 2x 2.25 GHz — Cortex-A520 |
| GPU | Adreno 840 | 6-core Apple GPU | Arm G1-Ultra | PowerVR DXT-48-1536 |
| NPU | Qualcomm Hexagon NPU | 16-core Neural Engine | MediaTek NPU 990 | Google’s fourth-generation Edge TPU |
| Connectivity | Snapdragon X85 5G modem 12.5 Gbps (peak downlink) 3.7 Gbps (peak uplink) Wi-Fi 7 (peak speed: 5.8 Gbps) Bluetooth 6.0 | Snapdragon X80 modem (iPhone 17 series) Apple C1X modem (iPhone Air) — only Sub-6 GHz Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0 | 3GPP Release-17 5G modem 7.4 Gbps peak speed Wi-Fi 7 (peak speed: 7.3 Gbps) Bluetooth 6.0 | Exynos 5400 5G modem Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0 |
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