Qualcomm quietly ships a cut down Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in a fancy name

Qualcomm's official spec sheet for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V Series (SM8850-1-AB) confirms the chip is a binned variant of the standard 8 Elite Gen 5, cutting one Adreno GPU slice while leaving the CPU, NPU, and modem untouched.

The document lists the Adreno 840 GPU at 2 slices running at 1.2GHz, down from 3 slices on the base 8 Elite Gen 5 (also 1.2GHz) and 3 slices at 1.3GHz on the 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. That 2-slice count puts the V Series at the same GPU scale as the non-Elite Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, which ships with a 2-slice Adreno 829, clocked slightly higher at around 1.225GHz. The V Series also carries just 12MB of Adreno High Performance Memory, down from 18MB on the standard 8 Elite Gen 5, though still 10MB ahead of the 8 Gen 5's 2MB cache. Other specs on the V Series match the standard 8 Elite Gen 5.

Xiaomi has confirmed the chip in the Redmi K100 Pro, launching in China on August 11 alongside the Redmi K100 Pro Max.

The 8 Elite Gen 5 V Series mark Qualcomm's first confirmed GPU-binned tier for the 8 Elite Gen 5 family: Elite-class CPU, NPU, and modem, but a GPU dialed back to sub-flagship scale.