Qualcomm shares its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 benchmark scores
These scores are self-reported by Qualcomm, using the company’s Qualcomm Reference Design prototype smartphone.
At Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit 2025, visitors were treated to a mainstay event of its chipset announcement: the benchmarking sessions. Naturally, we got the opportunity to try out the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 even before it made its way to phone brands.
Benchmark caveats
Qualcomm Reference Design phone for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
While benchmark numbers are always a good point of reference, they should always be taken with a pinch of salt. Synthetic benchmark scores merely reflect the potential performance of a component or processor.
Real-life usage almost always differs, be it the duration, the workload intensity of an app, or even the type of optimisations a phone maker may choose to include (e.g., thermal management, more RAM, etc.).
Qualcomm Reference Design phone for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
In Qualcomm’s benchmarks for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the chipset platform was wired into a Qualcomm Reference Design phone (affectionately called a QRD phone). These phones are test units that Qualcomm uses for its internal lab testing and pitching of new features to customers. They are not commercially available.
- 6.8-inch, 3,200 x 1,440 pixels resolution, 1-120Hz refresh rate
- 4,300mAh battery
- 24GB LPDDR5X (up to 5.3Gbps)
- 1TB storage (UFS 4.1, generation 5)
For those unfamiliar with benchmarking tools, we’ve included a simple note explaining what each benchmark measures.
Qualcomm’s QRD test phone (left) next to a user’s personal Xiaomi 15 Ultra handset (right), AnTuTu benchmark.
While the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 scores by Qualcomm are for reference only, we can cross-reference them against Qualcomm’s previously self-reported numbers for its preceding Snapdragon 8 Elite.
PCMark benchmark on the QRD phone.
| Benchmark | Test method | Purpose | Qualcomm's score range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6.5 single-thread | Average of 3 attempts | Test the CPU's ability to run one instruction at one time | 3,825 to 3,900 |
| Geekbench 6.5 multi-thread | Average of 3 attempts | Test the CPU's ability to run multiple tasks simultaneously | 12,200 to 12,350 |
| Speedometer (Chrome v139) | Average of 12 models | Test responsiveness of browsers | 48 to 49 |
| AnTuTu v11 | Average of 3 attempts | Test a combination of parts (CPU, GPU, RAM, etc.) to give a single score | 4.25 million to 4.5 million |
| GFXBench Manhattan 3.0, Offscreen, 1080p | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 314 to 357 |
| GFXBench Manhattan 3.1, Offscreen, OpenGL 1080p | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 471 to 487 |
| GFXBench Aztec Ruins, Vulkan (normal tier), Offscreen, 1080p | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 267 to 379 |
| GFXBench Aztec Ruins, Vulkan (high tier), Offscreen, 1440p | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 143 to 150 |
| GFXBench Aztec Ruins, Vulkan (normal tier), Offscreen, 1080p | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 262 |
| GFXBench Aztec Ruins, OpenGL (high tier), Offscreen, 1440p | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 120 to 121 |
| 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited, Offscreen | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 183 to 185 |
| 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited, Offscreen | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 50 |
| 3DMark Steel Nomad Unlimited | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 23 |
| 3DMark Solar Bay Unlimited | Average of 3 attempts | Graphics test | 55 |
| AITuTu - CV | 1 attempt | AI-related computer vision test | 2.5 million |
| AITuTu - LLM | 1 attempt | Large language model test | 90,000 to 1 million |
| AIMark | 1 attempt | Image classification, recognition, segmentation test | 380,000 |
| MLPerf | 1 attempt | Speed of training AI models | Object detection (4,221), image segmentation (3115), Super Resolution (519), Stable Diffusion (0.47 to 0.48) |
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s prototype phone has RAM that’s slightly faster than the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Elite’s QRD phone. The benchmarks reported by Qualcomm are also updated since the last reveal. Bear these in mind when you observe the ~25% difference between the new mobile platform and the old one.