Exynos 2600: Galaxy S26 SoC makes lackluster Geekbench debut

Although its fate remains uncertain at this point, Samsung's next-generation SoC, the Exynos 2600, has finally appeared on Geekbench. While its performance is nothing to write home about, it is an engineering sample that is still a while away from launch. Additionally, we get our first confirmation about its specs.

The Exynos 2600 (S5E9965) scores 2,155 and 7,788 points in Geekbench 6.4's single and multi-core tests. That's slightly lower than Galaxy Z Flip 7's Exynos 2500 SoC and leagues behind its estimated performance of 2,950 and 10,200 points. Given it is a pre-production sample, there is still scope for improvement, but it is unlikely to catch up with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 and Dimensity 9500.

Specs-wise, the Exynos 2600 sticks to Samsung's tried and tested 10-core design, with one core clocked at 3.55 GHz, three cores at 2.96 GHz and six cores at 2.46 GHz. A leak from a South Korean Forum, DCinside, states Samsung has mirrored MediaTek's strategy with an all-P-core design. The primary CPU core will be a Cortex-X930, and the remaining nine cores will be Cortex-A730.

Geekbench's back-end reveals it has an Xclipse 960 GPU. Its name suggests it is based on AMD's RDNA architecture, but a recent leak implied it would be Samsung's in-house development. Another notable Exynos 2600 upgrade includes the addition of SME (Scalable Matrix Extension) instructions. This should allow for faster performance in AI-related tasks.

The Exynos 2600's Geekbench debut doesn't necessarily mean it will end up powering the Galaxy S26 series next year because we saw the same sequence of events pan out last year with the Exynos 2500 and a Galaxy S25 prototype. However, the Exynos 2600 has shown up a lot earlier, indicating Samsung has stabilized SF2 yields enough to kick-off prototype production.