Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: Benchmarks reveal performance difference between Standard and Light modes ^↺

With the Galaxy S23 series, Samsung introduced new performance modes outside of the old Power Saving mode. While Power Saving mode adjusts brightness and limits CPU speed to 70%, the new modes—Standard and Light—are a bit more nuanced, and benchmarks have now revealed exactly how much of a performance difference there is between the two.

As tested by Golden Reviewer, the Galaxy S23 Ultra's Cortex-X3 core drops from a clock speed of 3.36 GHz to 2.84 GHz when switched from Standard to Light. The prime core's performance drops as well, going from a SPECint06 Big Core score of 60.86, down to 55.12. Not as significant as one would expect. Interestingly, power consumption drops from 4.90 W to 2.97 W. All of those numbers point toward Light mode being significantly more efficient—about 50% more so, actually—while only losing about 10% peak performance.

Those numbers are for the Cortex-X3 core in particular but carry over to multi-core performance as well. The Galaxy S23 Ultra in Standard has been tested on Geekbench with a single-core score of 1604, with that figure dropping down to 1377 in Light. In the multi-core test, the S23 Ultra and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 record a score of 5311 when in Standard, and drop down to 4896 in Light. Ergo, a 15% decrease in performance across the board between the two modes. 

The numbers look consistent: Light enforces a 10% to 15% drop in performance, with potentially higher efficiency gains. In fact, even in Light, Galaxy S23 series performance still edges right about every Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 device, while being more efficient. That's a huge win in our books.

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