Snapdragon 8s Gen3: Redefining Flagship Performance
Snapdragon 8s Gen3, a new smartphone System on Chip (SoC) introduced by Qualcomm at the Snapdragon event in March, aims to offer users a flagship-level experience at a more affordable price. In terms of product positioning, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 is quite innovative, embodying Qualcomm’s consistent style of “daring to be the pioneer”.
When it comes to nomenclature, Snapdragon 8s Gen3 belongs to the Snapdragon 8 flagship series without a doubt, yet it differentiates itself from Qualcomm’s mainstream flagship processors. Some users may view the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 as an enhanced version of last year’s flagship processor, the Snapdragon 8Gen3. While it does inherit many flagship features from the Snapdragon 8Gen3 and 8Gen2, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 is not simply an upgraded or downgraded version of any existing Snapdragon processor. It is a completely new product line representing a further expansion in the Snapdragon flagship series.
In terms of manufacturing process and CPU core architecture, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 features the flagship-standard TSMC 4nm technology, adopting a CPU architecture similar to the Snapdragon 8Gen3 flagship platform. However, it deviates from the “1+5+2” structure of the Snapdragon 8Gen3 and employs a classic three-cluster structure of “1+4+3”, with one less high-performance core and one additional power-efficient core. Furthermore, although the CPU core frequency and L2/L3 cache have been slightly reduced compared to the Snapdragon 8Gen3, the overall upgraded CPU architecture of the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 showcases remarkable performance and efficiency. While the CPU peak performance of the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 may not match that of the Snapdragon 8Gen3, it competes neck to neck with the previous flagship processor Snapdragon 8Gen2 and outperforms similar competitor processors by around 20%. In Geekbench 6 testing, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 achieved a single-core score of 1958 and a multi-core score of 5099, surpassing its competitors in the market.
Turning to the GPU, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 inherits the GPU architecture of the Snapdragon 8Gen2 and supports hardware-level features unique to mainstream flagship processors, such as hardware-accelerated mobile ray tracing, Image Motion Engine 2.0, Snapdragon Game Super Resolution, and the new Vulkan 1.3 API graphics interface standard. Although the GPU specifications and frequencies of the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 are more conservative, they are ample for smoothly running a variety of mainstream games at full frame rates. In various gaming tests, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 consistently performs excellently with smooth curves and minimal fluctuations, providing a satisfying gaming experience free from lag or frame drops.
However, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3’s excellence extends beyond just the CPU and GPU. It particularly shines in its peripheral features, with its exceptional capabilities in AI, imaging, and gaming aspects—three key areas of user concern.
The Snapdragon 8s Gen3 is equipped with the latest Hexagon NPU neural network processor, maintaining flagship-level AI performance. It can support large language models with up to 100 billion parameters and is compatible with mainstream multimodal generative AI models like Baichuan-7B, Google Gemini Nano, Llama2, and ChatGLM. In terms of imaging, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 retains the Snapdragon 8 Gen3’s three 18-bit cognitive ISPs, offering users outstanding dynamic range, vivid colors, and image clarity of up to 200 million pixels. For gaming enthusiasts, the Snapdragon 8s Gen3 features a full set of Snapdragon Elite Gaming gaming experience features, providing users with a comprehensive and immersive gaming experience from all angles.