Tested: Is the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy really better than the regular 8 Elite?

As has become the new normal, Samsung has an exclusive version of Qualcomm’s latest flagship processor tucked inside its new Galaxy S25 series. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, as it’s called, promises even more performance from an already incredibly quick chip, but does it live up to the hype? I’ve grabbed results from the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra to find out.

Neither Qualcomm nor Samsung has much to say on the specifics of the latest “for Galaxy” chip. We’ve ascertained that peak CPU clock speeds now hit 4.47GHz, up 150MHz from the standard 4.32GHz. Big numbers, but that equates to only a 3.5% boost, hardly enough to make a meaningful difference to your apps. Other provided metrics point to a 30% faster GPU and a 40% faster NPU than the previous generation, but that doesn’t say anything about how it compares to today’s rivals. To ascertain if this is really all that much better than the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite, we’ve run the chip through our usual benchmark suite.

Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy benchmarks

Jumping into the classic GeekBench 6 test, we can see that clock-speed boost manifests in a 3.9% single-core win over the OnePlus 13, making the Galaxy S25 Ultra the fastest here. It extends its lead in the multi-core test, with performance jumping by 7.2% over its regular 8 Elite rival, likely owing to the fact that its two big cores both benefit from this higher clock. Compared to last year’s S24 Ultra, the S25 Ultra runs 37% and 41% faster in single- and multi-core tests respectively, pretty much matching Qualcomm’s claims.

PCMark’s Work 3.0 test is more dependent on RAM and other system performance optimizations than GeekBench 6 and shows that Samsung continues to perform very well in everyday workloads, such as image and video editing. The Galaxy S25 Ultra outscores its predecessor by 9.4%, ensuring that a wide range of essential real-world applications will run very smoothly indeed.

The CPU improvements were a known quantity, but what about graphics? Well, 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme Stress Test yields a 29% lead against the S24 Ultra but no meaningful difference (-1%) against the OnePlus 13. I rechecked against the gaming-focused ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro and similarly found no change between the two (0.4% to the S25 this time). Peak scores are deadlocked in the ray-tracing Solar Bay tests as well, with the Galaxy S25 Ultra earning just a 1% lead over phones equipped with the regular version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite. In other words, there doesn’t appear to be any detectable graphics boost for the Galaxy S25 series.

In typical Samsung fashion, sustained performance isn’t great in either of these stress tests. Galaxy S25 Ultra performance tanks by 20% after a single one-minute run of Wild Life Extreme, while the OnePlus 13 dips by just 5%, suggesting that better cooling is playing an important part here. Last year’s S24 Ultra saw performance decline by 10% after a single run, which isn’t great but not as bad as this year’s model.

While the drop isn’t significant enough to remove the gap between the generations, it reconfirms that the Snapdragon 8 Elite can quickly give up a chunk of its GPU performance gains once temperatures ramp up. The “for Galaxy” variant of the Snapdragon 8 Elite doesn’t address this; instead, it’s all down to how well phones can keep the processor cool. At least Samsung’s flagship finishes the stress tests, unlike other 8 Elite phones that overheat.

Should you buy an S25 for its exclusive chip?

As has been the case in years past, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy provides a small performance boost over rival handsets, but it’s not significant enough to buy the phone for alone. This is especially the case for gamers who won’t see higher frame rates and might even see better sustained performance by picking a handset with a superior cooling setup than the S25 Ultra. Still, the Galaxy S25 Ultra technically sits at the top of a few of our benchmarking metrics thanks to its tweaked chip.

In addition, the partnership has allowed Samsung to integrate Spatio-Temporal Filter (STF) support into the image signal processor this year, though it’s not alone in working to optimize Snapdragon’s imaging pipeline for its specific requirements. The chip also powers the S25’s ProScaler image scaling solution and mDNIe display efficiency technology, so the Galaxy S25 packs in a bit more than just raw performance gains with its new chip.

Still, when it comes to deciding on the Galaxy S25 series or one of its new rivals, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy probably shouldn’t weigh too heavily on the pros list. There are plenty of other things to consider when deciding if an upgrade to the S25 is worthwhile, after all.