Building on the strong foundation established by last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm is set to launch its successor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, with stronger performance and efficiency. With less than a week to launch, there’s plenty of excitement around this flagship chipset. Thanks to early leaks and benchmarks, we already know much about the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. So, here’s everything you need to know about it ahead of the official launch.
Qualcomm’s weird naming scheme
The upcoming Qualcomm chip will be called “Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5,” which appears to be an unusual naming scheme, given that its predecessor was called Snapdragon 8 Elite. A rather simpler name could have been Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 or Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2, but for the chipmaker, the new name makes a lot of sense.
Qualcomm’s going back to the previous naming scheme. The first gen was 8 Gen 1, then 8 Gen 2, then 8 Gen 3, and then we got the Snapdragon 8 Elite (fourth generation), and now we’re heading towards the fifth-gen Snapdragon flagship. This wouldn’t have been that confusing if Snapdragon 8 Elite had actually been called Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 4. I guess Qualcomm missed out on this.
Besides the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, Qualcomm may also unveil a slightly less powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 at the Snapdragon Summit on September 23. Around mid-2026, there will be even more affordable Snapdragon 8s Gen 5 completing the lineup.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5: CPU, GPU, and other details
Qualcomm isn’t shifting to TSMC’s 2nm cutting-edge process node just yet. The upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will still utilize TSMC’s 3nm node, but with an improved ‘N3P’ technology. It can deliver a 5% better performance at the same power consumption as 8 Elite’s 3nm ‘N3E’ node.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 would still use the same “2+6” CPU cluster, but despite that, Qualcomm was able to achieve significant performance improvements in early benchmarks. According to Xiaomi 17 Pro’s Geekbench listing featuring the same chipset, there will be two custom Oryon cores at 3.63 GHz and six custom Oryon cores at 4.61 GHz.
Samsung appears to be preparing a “for Galaxy” version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, in partnership with the tech giant, featuring a higher clock speed. The alleged Geekbench listing of Galaxy S26 Edge, powered by the same chip, reveals two Oryon cores at 4.74 GHz and six Oryon cores at 3.63 GHz.
One of the key reasons for a performance boost will be a larger L2 and L3 cache. The last year’s 8 Elite has a 24MB cache (12MB L2, 12MB L3), and its successor will bring 32MB cache (16MB L2, 16MB L3).
The new Elite chip would also feature a new Adreno 840 GPU with a higher clock speed of 1.20 GHz. In contrast, the Snapdragon 8 Elite has an Adreno 830 GPU at 1.10 GHz. Some rumors suggest the new NPU may achieve up to 100TOPS of processing speed. If this turns out to be true, the 8 Elite Gen 5 will have a higher AI processing speed than most notebook-class chips.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5: Benchmark score
A Xiaomi smartphone, believed to be the Xiaomi 17 Pro, recently made an appearance on Geekbench 6.4 with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, showcasing its raw CPU performance. It achieved a single-core score of 3,831 and a multi-core score of 11,525, suggesting a considerable performance upgrade over Snapdragon 8 Elite (3,179/10,114).
The Apple A18 Pro (3,461/8,546), on the other hand, still leads in single-core performance, although the gap is narrowing; however, the Snapdragon chip makes a strong comeback in multi-core performance.
The AnTuTu listing hasn’t surfaced yet, but according to a reliable Chinese tipster, Digital Chat Station, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 achieves about 4.4 million points on AnTuTu (version 11).
Xiaomi is likely to be the first brand to release a smartphone with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 5 chipset — possibly the Xiaomi 17 Pro. We’ll have more details about the chip and the upcoming devices featuring this flagship chip at the Snapdragon Summit next week.
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (rumored) | |
|---|---|
| Status | To be announced (Sep 23) |
| Process node | TSMC’s 3nm (N3P) |
| CPU | Octa core |
| CPU cluster | 2 x 4.61 GHz — Oryon 6 x 3.63 GHz — Oryon |
| GPU | Adreno 840 GPU at 1.20 GHz Ray tracing support |
| NPU | Qualcomm NPU Up to 100 TOPS |
| Benchmark | Geekbech v6.4: – 3,831 (single core) – 11,525 (multi core) AnTuTu v11: about 4.4 million |
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