Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 Delivers Quicker Clocks And Higher Energy Effectivity
The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 maintains the identical Kryo CPU complicated in a 1+3+4, with a single Prime Cortex-X2 core, three Cortex-A71 Efficiency cores, and 4 Cortex-A51 Effectivity cores. Nonetheless, the height clock on the Cortex-X2 core has been goosed to three.2GHz, a 200MHz improve over the non-Plus variant. Whereas not disclosed, from what we are able to inform, the Efficiency cores now go as much as 2.75GHz (up from 2.5GHz) and the Effectivity cores get a 200MHz pace bump to 2GHz.
Based on Qualcomm, the sooner clock pace delivers a ten p.c acquire in CPU efficiency. Qualcomm additionally boosted the Adreno GPU clock by 10 p.c to offer gaming and graphics a efficiency uplift as properly.
It isn’t solely about sooner efficiency with this launch; Qualcomm can also be touting important energy effectivity positive aspects.
Qualcomm credit an “improved” Adreno GPU with not solely delivering sooner speeds, but additionally a 30 p.c energy discount “to ship the final word gameplay expertise.” The implication there’s a enhance in body charges for smoother gaming, whereas holding a cost for an extended time period. Based on Qualcomm, customers can count on as much as 60 further minutes of gaming. Not too shabby.
Identical goes for the CPU, with Qualcomm additionally claiming a peak 30 p.c enchancment in energy effectivity. Past the peaks, what this all purportedly interprets to is a 15 p.c energy financial savings over the non-Plus variant.
What does this imply for precise utilization? Along with extending gameplay for an hour, Qualcomm says customers can count on 80 extra minutes of video streaming, 5.5 extra hours of speak time and 25 minutes of 5G WeChat video calling, a further 50 minutes of looking social media websites and providers, and 17 extra hours of music playback.
As you’ll count on, the pace will increase and energy effectivity positive aspects do not come on the expense of the general feature-set. As with the non-Plus variant, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 options Qualcomm’s seventh AI engine, it helps recording 8K movies in HDR, and is able to rock out on 5G networks with help for each sub-6GHz and mmWave.
Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 Efficiency Check Car And Benchmarks
As we had been capable of do with the earlier era chipset, we managed to get our palms on a prototype reference handset outfitted with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, and 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM. This provides us as near an apples-to-apples comparability as potential between the Plus and non-Plus variants, with out customized themes or different third-party bits that would doubtlessly have an effect on the outcomes.


The gulf widened considerably once we ran the AnTuTu benchmark. Right here we see a larger than 20 p.c bounce within the total rating in comparison with our greatest end result obtained from a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 handset. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 additionally beat the Dimensity 9000 by 12.3 p.c.

An attention-grabbing pattern over the previous few generations of smartphones is an elevated give attention to AI efficiency. Whereas that time period will get thrown round somewhat loosely lately, AI has emerged as an essential side in trendy cellular experiences. From real-time language translation and parsing voice instructions, to cleansing up images on-the-fly, AI efficiency issues to our day-to-day utilization.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 excels at AI workloads, and as we are able to see within the efficiency chart above, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 kicks issues up a notch. Qualcomm’s seventh Gen AI Engine packs a punch, and whereas it stays unchanged from the non-Plus variant, our guess is the sooner CPU clocks are serving to out right here.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 3DMark And GFXBench Benchmarks

Turning our consideration to gaming and graphics, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 will get off to a powerful begin by transferring the higher efficiency needle in 3DMark Wild Life Limitless. Up so far, we noticed scores topping out at round 10,200. Qualcomm’s newest silicon, nevertheless, hit 11,000, besting the earlier high end result by 8.2 p.c.

Earlier than transferring on, it is value noting that the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 dealt with 3DMark’s 20 minute Wild Life stress check like a champ. That is notable as a result of it means the SoC is not fast to throttle and doubtlessly tank efficiency. The caveat is that the onus does not solely fall on the silicon, but additionally the handset and particularly its on-board thermal answer. Outcomes will inevitably range relying on the precise retail smartphone fashions, however what this tells us is that the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is certainly energy environment friendly and able to sustaining excessive efficiency ranges for prolonged durations of time.

The efficiency uplifted carried over to GFXBench the place the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 posted a brand new excessive rating at 475 frames per second, which is a 7.7 p.c improve over the earlier finest end result. We will additionally see a reasonably extensive hole between the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and Dimensity 9000.

Completely different GFXBench check, similar story—the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 once more took pole place, beating out its non-Plus sibling and MediaTek’s most interesting (although the hole will not be as large right here).

Closing issues out, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 once more took the highest spot on this Vulkan benchmark, ensuing a clear sweep of our benchmarks. We do not have fairly the sturdy set of outcomes to check in opposition to, however we nonetheless can observe a modest bounce in efficiency over the earlier era flagship.
Closing Ideas On Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
Given what we already knew concerning the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, it isn’t a shock that the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 carried out so properly throughout quite a lot of benchmarks. We simply did not know if the efficiency uplift would reside as much as Qualcomm’s claims, and so far as our testing goes, it does for essentially the most half.
What’s maybe much more spectacular is that it dealt with the 3DMark stress check so properly. Qualcomm is claiming large positive aspects in energy effectivity. This cannot solely enhance battery life, but additionally lead to a smartphone performing near its peak for an extended time period. That is clearly depending on cooling too, however our reference prototype proves that it will not be the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 that issues again.
We’re wanting ahead to see how future flagship Android telephones leverage Qualcomm’s latest silicon. To that finish, Qualcomm says we are able to to see gadgets from the main OEMs and types, together with ASUS ROG, Black Shark, Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, OSOM, RealMe, Redmagic, Redmi, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.
All of the heavy hitters, in different phrases, with hints that gaming telephones with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 are on the horizon. When it comes to timing, Qualcomm says we’ll see business gadgets start to reach within the third quarter of this yr, so maybe as early as July.