Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Smokes Apple A18 In Impressive Benchmark Leak

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Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is just around the corner, and its promised performance is driving no small amount of hype. A new leak sheds more light over the Gen 4's potential to give Apple's engineers some sleepless nights. Supposed Geekbench scores from a Snapdragon 8 Gen 4-powered OnePlus 13 show the new SoC running close to the A18 in single-core speed while handily topping it in multi-core.

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OnePlus 13 running Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. (Credit: 数码闲聊站 on Weibo)

According to a screenshot uploaded by 数码闲聊站 (Shùmǎ xiánliáo zhàn, or "Digital Chat Station") to Weibo, a OnePlus 13 (model PJZ110) running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 has some potent single- and multi-core Geekbench 6 scores. The phone setup is shown to have 16GB RAM with a 2+6-core CPU cluster. The scores come back with 3,326 for single-core, and 10,049 for multi-core.

It must be said that as long as the so-called Android versus iPhone debate has raged, benchmark scores have inevitably become a dueling ground to compare tech advancements as much as for bragging rights. So in the context of these scores, the Snapdragon's single-core performance doesn't yet beat the Apple's A18, but brings it closer than ever before. However, the multi-core numbers are something else altogether: at 10,049, this makes the SD8 Gen 4 some 18% faster than the latest A18s and 39% faster than the A17 Pro.  

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Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Geekbench 6 scores. (Credit: 数码闲聊站 on Weibo)

While we definitely still want to take these results with a grain of salt, the numbers are indeed promising, especially if the upcoming SoC can sustain that level of performance without throttling. The leaked screenshot shows Cluster 2 running at a peak 4.32 GHz, compared to the A18's 4.04 GHz cap. Geekbench 6 tests are short, and meant to reflect processors' full power. This can produce nice, high numbers for premium silicon, but how well these numbers hold up in real-life usage can be quite different.

As mentioned, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is a 2+6 core setup, reportedly consisting of new CPU cores designed by Nuvia staffers.That company was founded by former Apple engineers who wanted the freedom to work on more powerful CPUs, and Qualcomm quickly snapped them up to gain a competitive advantage. The purchase has since allowed Qualcomm to release products like the bonkers Snapdragon X Elite laptop chips. It will be fascinating to see if these results bear out in shipping products.