The Luck of Multiple Cores
With its eight CPU cores and Adreno 830 GPU, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the latest behemoth imagined by Qualcomm. However, the American company has decided to turn its bull into an ox by castrating it with a CPU core in a variant called SM8750-3-AB. According to the laws of hardware, this ablation is logically observed in benchmarks – certainly less so on a daily basis.
The existence of this chip was confirmed a few days ago, notably by the TECH INFO account on the social network X.
In its original version, the Snapdragon 8 Elite therefore has eight CPU cores: two Prime Oryon Gen 2 cores and six Performance Oryon Gen 2 cores. Code name of this now variant: SM8750-AB.
Made official without fanfare, the SM8750-3-AB version loses a Performance CPU core. No need to be a great arithmetician to deduce that the total number of cores goes from eight to seven. Based on the technical sheet, these are the only differences between the two chips. The excellent GPU remains intact.
Degraded performance
If we are talking about the SM8750-3-AB today, it is because it has been through the Geekbench benchmark. The software distinguishes it correctly; it exposes a cluster 1 with 5 cores and a cluster 2 with 2 cores. With cores operating at 3.53 GHz and 4.32 GHz respectively, it also confirms the maintenance of the official CPU frequencies recommended by Qualcomm.
The processor is integrated here into the Oppo Find N5 smartphone. Compared to the scores of the SM-S938U, in other words the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, which uses a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip with its full capabilities, a drop is felt in multi-threads in particular: 10120 points for the Samsung, against 8865 for the Oppo. The gap is smaller in single-thread, with 3182 points versus 3083. The difference here is attributable to the frequencies: the Samsung benefits from faster Prime cores, since they reach 4.47 GHz.
Such a trimming blow will certainly not be to the taste of all customers, especially for a flagship of this caliber. It is likely that Qualcomm did this to recycle some partially defective chips; for its customers (the brands, not you), it is probably a slightly less expensive alternative. That said, in everyday use, the impact should still be limited; judge on the facts. But if you were considering purchasing a smartphone equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, keep this detail in mind.
Source: Geekbench
0 Comments