Some upcoming smartphones with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 have already gone through Geekbench – for example, the Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra. When they did, the benchmark reported the following frequencies for the three clusters: 3.36GHz Prime core, 2.80GHz Performance cores and 2.02GHz Efficiency cores.
It’s not just Samsung’s flagships, but there are plenty of upcoming phones that will feature the 8 Gen 2 chipset. And we have also seen benchmarks from some of them, e.g. vivo X90 Pro and iQOO 11. But look closely – the frequency of the Prime core on them is listed as 3.19GHz. This is the value that Qualcomm has also announced, 3.1872GHz was the exact number given. So how come Samsung runs higher clocks?
Early Geekbench results from Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phones
A few days ago Ice universe said that the European version will use an “exclusive high-frequency version” of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. However, the benchmarks we’ve seen so far came from the US models, so this is likely a global thing rather than a Europe-only thing.
Now the leak adds more details – the Prime CPU core will actually be clocked at 3.36GHz instead of 3.2GHz. But the GPU will also run faster – 719MHz, up from 680MHz.
Qualcomm has occasionally released “AC” versions that run at higher clocks than the base chip. For example, Snapdragon 855 has a model number SM8150, SM8150-AC is 855+, which boosted the Prime core from 2.84GHz to 2.96GHz. The 8 Gen 2 announced this week is the SM8550-AB, so this should be the SM8550-AC.
It is not clear whether this chip, which is bound for the Galaxy S23 series, will be dubbed the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 or something else. But it looks like Qualcomm and TSMC found enough room for a decent overclock.
Official figures from Qualcomm claim that the 8 Gen 2 CPU is 35% faster than its 8 Gen 1 counterpart, the GPU is 25% faster. Given the overclocking for both, this new version of the chip should be even faster. However, it is difficult to say how much faster, as it is too early to read benchmark results.
