Samsung Galaxy S26: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy outperforms the Exynos 2600 in early post-launch CPU benchmarks

Samsung debuted the Galaxy S26 series yesterday globally. While the Galaxy S26 Ultra exclusively ships with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy onboard, the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus can both be had with Samsung's in-house Exynos 2600. Both chipsets have now been benchmarked.

As shared by GadgetsBoy, the Galaxy S26 Ultra earns a single-core score of 3,670 on Geekbench 6, and a multi-core score of 10,981. Comparatively, the Galaxy S26 Plus with its Exynos 2600 scores 3105 and 10,444 on those two respective tests, showcasing about a 10% CPU advantage for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. 

Another Geekbench 6 comparison shows similar results: The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy scores 3,724 in the single-core test, while the Exynos 2600 scores 3,197. On the multi-core test, it's 11,237 for the Qualcomm chipset and 11,012 for the Exynos.

GPU-wise, the Exynos 2600 seems to perform right on par with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. The former records a 24,240 OpenCL score, while the latter scores 24,152.

Overall, the results bode well for the Exynos 2600. While previous Exynos chipsets generally failed to keep up with their Qualcomm counterparts, Samsung's latest attempt appears to be an equal to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy for the most part. That said, these are still early, basic benchmark tests and it'll be interesting to see how both chipsets compare under more tasking workloads.

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