Alleged Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Geekbench scores indicate A17 Bionic CPU superiority

Alleged Geekbench scores of Apple's next-gen SoC, the A17 Bionic, leaked earlier in the week, with around a 20% performance bump versus the A16 Bionic. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will debut at the end of the year as the A17 Bionic's rival, but it appears Apple will continue its performance dominance.

According to word on the grapevine, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will not be able to match Apple's A17 Bionic—in the CPU department at least. Instead, it appears the next-gen Qualcomm chipset will only manage to equal the A16 Bionic, with the A17 Bionic continuing the trend of Apple's premium SoC being a generation ahead of Qualcomm's, performance-wise.

Supposedly, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will record scores between 1750 and 1800 on Geekbench 5's single-core test, and in the region of 6450 and 6500 on the multi-core test. Comparatively, the A16 Bionic on the iPhone 14 Pro phones average about 1880 and 5450 on those tests. The same source claims the A17 Bionic scores around 2300 on Geekbench 5's single-core test.

None of this would be surprising, in any case. As previously mentioned, Apple's Bionic chipsets tend to retain a generational advantage over their Qualcomm counterparts. In addition, the A17 Bionic is said to be built on TSMC's 3 nm node, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will continue on a 4 nm process. Advantage: Apple.

Buy the Apple Watch Series 8 on Amazon.