Snapdragon 8 Gen 4: Potential Release Date, Leaked Benchmarks, Rumors & More

The Snapdragon Summit is confirmed, and it’s scheduled for October 2024. Qualcomm is expected to release its next flagship, Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 for mobile platforms. There is a lot of excitement as the American chipmaker is planning to move its CPU core design to Oryon CPUs this year. Over the past few months, we’ve seen a lot of leaks about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, so let’s dissect them all, one-by-one.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Potential Release Date

Qualcomm has confirmed that 2024’s Snapdragon Summit will be held from October 21 to 23 at Maui, Hawaii. And like every year, the company will likely announce its flagship mobile SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 (codename SM8750) between October 21 and 23. Following that, we may see smartphone launches by Xiaomi, OnePlus, iQOO, and other OEMs.

Oryon CPU Architecture Incoming?

Back in February, we reported that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will feature Oryon CPU cores, as confirmed by Don McGuire, Qualcomm’s Chief Marketing Officer at the MWC 2024. He said, “as our mobile platforms are reinvented with our Oryon CPU, so there’s gonna be some really cool stuff coming down the pipe…“

In case you are unaware, the Oryon CPU core has been designed by a group of ex-Apple engineers who left Apple to start a company named Nuvia. Later, Qualcomm acquired Nuvia in 2021 and since then, the Nuvia team has been working on a high-performance ARM-based custom CPU core. Qualcomm first debuted these new Oryon CPU cores on the Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chipsets for Windows PCs.

While Oryon is definitely more powerful than earlier Kryo cores, I am not very confident about the thermal performance. Multiple outlets in their Snapdragon X Elite reviews report that while the performance is top-notch, it also heats up and consumes more power. The Oryon-based processors run well at 3.4GHz. But when the clock speed rises to 3.8GHz or above 4.0GHz, the chipset throttles despite active cooling.

Reports also suggest that Qualcomm may go with a 2+6 (octa-core) CPU cluster for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. Whether Qualcomm will pack 2x high-perf Oryon CPU cores or employ ARM’s latest Cortex-X925 core based on ARM v9.2 CPU design, is left to be seen. Also, for mid-cores, will Qualcomm pick the latest Cortex-A725 core? We don’t know yet. Reportedly, there will be no low-power efficiency cores.

With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, Qualcomm will finally move to TSMC’s latest 3nm process node (N3E) which is quite mature at this point. Perhaps, TSMC’s advanced fabrication process is allowing Qualcomm to squeeze out more performance at a lower power envelope, suitable for mobile phones.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 4: Leaked Benchmarks

A Vietnamese forum (voz.vn) has reported that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 scored 3,133,570 points on the AnTuTu benchmark. On Geekbench, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 reportedly scored 2,845 on single-core tasks, and 10,628 on multi-core tasks. The multi-core performance is pretty impressive.

That said, the outlet also reports that the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 performs even better, especially in the multi-core test, crossing 11K points. And MediaTek usually packs ARM-designed Cortex cores. It seems that ARM’s CPU design has caught up with the rest of the industry. It’s going to be a challenge for Qualcomm and Apple to continue their lead with their custom CPU cores.

What About Adreno GPU on Gen 4?

As for the GPU, the Adreno GPU on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is said to bring exceptional graphics performance. According to Digital Chat Station on Weibo, a demanding game like Genshin Impact runs smoothly at 1080p resolution. Even if we consider the leaked benchmark numbers, it’s clear that the next-gen Adreno GPU is pretty impressive.

Last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 scored around 927,463 points in the AnTuTu GPU test. And the leaked benchmark of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 suggests that its GPU can reach up to 1,330,057 points. That’s a performance difference of 43% YoY. We will have to wait and see how well the new GPU performs on actual Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 phones.

Upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Phones

According to tipster Yogesh Brar, the first batch of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 phones will be released by Xiaomi. Xiaomi 15 and 15 Pro will sport the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset. After that, OnePlus and iQOO will release their Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 phones.

Besides that, Ming-Chi Kuo, a well-known tipster, says that the Samsung Galaxy S25 series will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 SoC worldwide. This year, Samsung may not use its upcoming Exynos 2500 processor on the Galaxy S25 series due to lower yield.

So that is all about the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset from Qualcomm. While the performance improvement is going to be substantial this year, do keep in mind that costs may also get higher. TSMC’s N3E process node is costly, so Qualcomm is charging more money from smartphone makers. In the end, consumers will largely bear the expensive price tag of flagship smartphones. So, are you going to upgrade? Let us know in the comments below.