Degraded Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 efficiency reported as Cortex-X4 core guzzles 28% more power for 14% more performance vs 8 Gen 2+

When Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, the company promised a 30% performance increase for the CPU alongside a 20% reduction in power use. To achieve this, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 specs include a triple cluster design with a single Cortex-X4 core that can operate at up to 3.3 GHz, five Cortex-A720 cores three of which have a boost clock of 3.2 GHz while the remaining two cores boost at up to 3 GHz, and finally, two power saving Cortex-A520 cores at up to 2.3 GHz.

Chinese reviewer Golden Reviewer has now tested the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s Cortex-X4 core inside the newly launched Xiaomi 14 Pro.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Cortex-X4 performance

Right off the bat, we can see that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 brings an excellent CPU performance bump when it comes to the Cortex-X4 core. In the SPECint06 Big Core test, Golden Reviewer measured a 14% performance increase over the Cortex-X3 inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2+, the SoC inside the Samsung Galaxy S23 (Buy it on Amazon). The delta increases to 22%, 43%, and a massive 59% when compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (Cortex-X3), Dimensity 9200 (Cortex-X3), and Google Tensor G3 (Cortex-X3) respectively.

When it comes to IPC gains, the Cortex-X4 inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 reportedly depicts an IPC gain (perf/GHz) of around 16% vs the Cortex-X3 of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2+ and 17.5% vs the Cortex-X3 of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Suffice it to say, the Cortex-X4 inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a beast of a CPU core delivering a massive performance uplift over the last gen. However, this increase in performance appears to come at a significant power draw.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Cortex-X4 power consumption

Per Golder Reviewer’s analysis, the Cortex-X4 core consumes a whopping 28% more power than the Cortex-X3 inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2+. The consumption appears even worse when the Cortex-X4 is compared to the Cortex-X3 of the vanilla Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 where the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s big core reportedly uses an insane 75% more energy.

The reviewer also noted that because of the increased power consumption of Cortex-X4, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 efficiency was down by 11% vs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2+ and a tremendous 31% vs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Put simply, the Cortex-X4 core of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a powerhouse of a CPU core but, as mentioned by Golden Reviewer, smartphone makers need to utilize it with care since it guzzles power.