Here's why games might look better on the Galaxy S25 Ultra

While the early Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 CPU benchmarks have been impressive, you might wonder about the GPU side of things. The Adreno 830, the new Qualcomm GPU, will reportedly perform 43% to 56% better than the Adreno 740; the latter was found in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset that powers the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. That's the word from Weibo leaker The Undead who says that the Adreno 830 ran at 1.15GHz in a test, close to the 1.25GHz that leaker Ice Universe said that the GPU was being tested at.

The Undead said that the 1.15GHz clock speed was achieved while the GPU ran on a Qualcomm Reference Device (QRD). Chips used on a QRD are from early runs and usually can't reach the higher speeds seen in retail devices. As a result, Ice Universe could be right about the Adreno 830 running at 1.25GHz once the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is announced.

GFX Bench’s Aztec Ruins High showed the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and the Adreno 830 GPU supporting 125 frames per second (fps). That's a greater than 30% improvement from the 96fps achieved by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset's Adreno 750 GPU. The new Adreno 830 GPU also ran 3DMark’s Wild Life offscreen test and the Wild Life Extreme Unlimited test and scored 166fps and 44fps respectively.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 AP will be introduced next month by Qualcomm which usually makes the announcement during its annual Snapdragon Summit. The first phones to be powered by the new SoC could be the Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Pro followed by the One Plus 13 and the iQOO 13. The chip could be found in all Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra models early in 2025. 

While there is a possibility that Qualcomm will change the name of the chipset to the Snapdragon Elite, until that names is officially announced by Qualcomm, I prefer to call it the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.

With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 AP being built by TSMC using its second-generation 3nm process node (N3E), the SoC will be the first Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset made using the 3nm node. While there had been rumors about Qualcomm dual-sourcing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 from both TSMC and Samsung Foundry, the decision to return some Snapdragon production to Samsung Foundry has apparently been put on hold until next year's Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 AP.

The early speculation on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 calls for both TSMC and Samsung Foundry to dual-source the component for Qualcomm. TSMC would build some chips using its third-gen 3nm process node (N3P). Some of the chips could be built by Samsung Foundry using its SF2 2nm node.