New Benchmarks Cast Doubt on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s Energy Efficiency

Recently, an increasing number of new smartphones equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform have been released, impressing consumers with their robust CPU and GPU performance. However, a recent comparison of benchmark data by the blogger Golden Reviewer revealed that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform must increase power consumption to significantly outperform the second generation, resulting in less efficient energy performance than anticipated.

Golden Reviewer conducted the SPECint06 large-core benchmark test on the Xiaomi 14 Pro, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform, scoring 69.28. In comparison, the overclocked version of the second-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform (provided by Samsung) scored 60.86 in the same test. Although the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 leads by 13% in scoring, its power consumption reached 6.27W, compared to just 4.90W for the overclocked second-generation platform, marking a 28% increase in power consumption for the newer generation.

Following this data analysis, the digital media outlet Wccftech suggested that this phenomenon might indicate that TSMC’s N4P process has reached its limits. As a result, Qualcomm has had to increase power consumption to enhance the advantage of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 over its predecessor. However, this approach inevitably leads to higher SoC temperatures and impacts the battery life of the smartphone.

In response to this issue, Golden Reviewer commented that smartphone manufacturers must develop deep and rational performance scheduling strategies for phones equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform. They should aim to avoid pushing the SoC to its highest frequency state to prevent overheating and consequent throttling.