Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 hits 5 GHz in early Geekbench run but can’t sustain it

Qualcomm's upcoming flagship smartphone SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 (formerly known as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro), has made an early Geekbench appearance alongside a smartphone codenamed Vivo V2606A (likely iQOO 16). It gives us a rough idea about its CPU configuration and performance, but some parts of the leak don't add up.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 scored 3,434 points in Geekbench 6.7.1 single-core and 9,334 in multi-core. For starters, that is slower than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5's average Geekbench scores of 3,631 and 10,940. Then again, these are all engineering samples running pre-production firmware, so performance regression is to be expected.

An earlier MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Geekbench listing was just as disappointing with 2,653 single-core and 7,516 multi-core. Xiaomi, meanwhile, is claiming 3,945 and 15,221 points for its Xring O3 in Geekbench 6.5, but that's first-party data and should be treated with skepticism. Geekbench identifies the smartphone as "QTI SM8975", which, in itself, is puzzling. Smartphone model names almost never give away the SoC model number, so this particular detail stands out.

As rumoured earlier, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 has a 2+3+3 CPU layout with three cores running at up to 3.74 GHz, another three at 4.03 GHz, while the two fastest cores top out at 5.01 GHz. That makes Qualcomm one of the first smartphone chipmakers to push beyond the 5 GHz barrier on paper.

The backend telemetry is a little less spectacular. Geekbench's processor-frequency data shows the chip spending the run at roughly 4.59-4.60 GHz, indicating it was unable to sustain its 5.01 GHz peak during the benchmark. That would also help explain why the multi-core score looks relatively tepid for a next-generation flagship part. The backend also confirms the presence of an Adreno 850, giving the listing further legitimacy.

Qualcomm is expected to reveal the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 (yeah, we know) in September at its annual Snapdragon Summit event.