Update (January 17, 2024): The battle for Android supremacy heats up with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Samsung’s Exynos 2400 facing off in benchmark tests. Early benchmark results indicate neck-and-neck performance between the two.
Samsung Galaxy S24+ with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3:
- Geekbench 6 score: 2,297 (single-core), 7,104 (multi-core).
Samsung Galaxy S24+ with Exynos 2400:
- Geekbench 6 score: 2,193 (single-core), 6,895 (multi-core).
We can see that Snapdragon maintains a slight lead (4% difference) in Single-core performance. In Multi-core performance, Exynos trails slightly (3% difference). So, Exynos shows significant improvement compared to previous benchmarks, narrowing the gap with Snapdragon.
The old story published on October 11, 2023 follows…
Out of all the major chipsets that’ll come out for flagship smartphones in 2024, Samsung will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Exynos 2400 for their S24 lineup. According to early leaks, Samsung will use a mix of the 8 Gen 3 and Exynos 2400.
The S24 and S24 Plus will ship with the Exynos 2400 chip in select regions. In other regions, it’ll ship with the 8 Gen 3. The S24 Ultra will use the 8 Gen 3 in all regions. While the Exynos 2400 is exclusive to Samsung, the 8 Gen 3 will later be used on many flagship phones in 2024. However, Samsung has a slight advantage here too.
Due to an ongoing partnership with Qualcomm, they’ll get an exclusive 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, with higher clock speeds and theoretically higher peak performance. Other companies will get a similar form of this chip later as the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 3 if there are plans for that.
In this article, we’ll theoretically compare the upcoming 8 Gen 3 and Exynos 2400, and this will speculate on which region is getting the better deal. Since our sources for the 8 Gen 3 are all from early leaks, we don’t claim that the information we have for now is accurate, and it’s merely speculation. We’ll update the article when new information comes out.
What to expect from 2024’s flagship chipsets?
According to Samsung’s official announcement, the Exynos 2400 will have a 10-core CPU. It’ll use Samsung’s 4nm 4LPP+ fabrication process, which is apparently an improvement. It has better yield rates, and this might reduce heating issues. It’ll support UFS 4.0 and LPDDR5X RAM (8.5 GBPS Bandwidth). It’ll also use the Exynos 5300 5G modem. The ISP could support up to 8K 60 FPS video recording and a maximum camera resolution of up to 320MP. The XClpise 940 GPU also offers native Ray Tracing support, and it’s a massive improvement over the GPU on the Exynos 2200.
Qualcomm is allegedly sticking with an 8-core configuration with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It’ll use an 8-core CPU and still use TSMC’s 4nm fabrication process. The yield rate is still excellent and is currently the best balance between costs, efficiency, performance, and thermals. The chip will also support LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0, and Qualcomm has its own proprietary 5G modems, which they also license to other manufacturers. We’re not sure about the ISP improvements this time around. It could feature up to a 39% boost in GPU performance from last year while also improving efficiency. That’s impressive since the current 8 Gen 2’s Adreno 740 GPU already beats the best GPUs while maintaining class-leading efficiency. The Adreno 750 will break records.
Exynos 2400 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
1. CPU Comparison
The Exynos 2400 has a high-performance (Prime) X4 core with a 3.1 GHz clock speed. Two The chip will also have two Cortex-A720 performance cores at 2.9 GHz. Then, we have three more Cortex-A720 cores at 2.6 GHz (mid-performance). Finally, we expect four efficiency cores, Cortex-A520 at 1.8GHz. This 10-core configuration is a good balance between efficiency and performance.
Qualcomm’s 8-core cluster, this time, is allegedly dropping one of the small cores or efficiency cores. It could have one Prime Cortex-X4 core with a staggering 3.7 GHz clock speed. It could have two Cortex-A720 cores at a high clock for performance cores. Then, it’ll have two Cortex-A720 cores at lower clock speeds for mid-performance cores and, finally, two Cortex-A520 small cores for efficiency. Clock speed numbers remain unknown at the moment. Qualcomm is apparently using the marketing terms “Silver,” “Gold,” “Titanium,” and “Gold Plus” to describe the new CPU configuration.
TSMC’s 4nm node with over 70% yield is definitely a better choice than the new 55% yield 3nm node. It has respectable efficiency while also maintaining good performance. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 scores over 2 Million points on the popular AnTuTu Benchmark. This is an impressive score for a 4nm SOC, and it’s probably difficult for the Exynos 2400 to match it.
2. GPU Comparison
The XClipse 940 on the Exynos 2400 might match the Adreno 750 GPU. Both support Ray Tracing, but Qualcomm might maintain a lead in efficiency. The XClipse 940 GPU might deliver the same performance, but developers typically optimize for Qualcomm better since it is more popular and the chips will be used on more phones. The XClpise 940 uses AMD’s RDNA3 architecture.
3. NPU and AI
The S24 and S24 Plus might have a major improvement in AI. The Exynos 2400, according to Samsung, has a staggering 1470% boost in AI performance. This could enable native text-to-image conversion, image-to-text conversion, Generative AI, and more. Samsung might market the S24 as an AI Phone. It looks miles ahead of Qualcomm’s offering, so Samsung might make up for it on the Snapdragon model using the software.
Verdict
That was the early comparison between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Exynos 2400. We’ll update the article with relevant information after more information about these chips comes out. For now, this looks like Samsung’s most ambitious project with chipsets in a long time, and it might match Qualcomm. More competition in this space benefits consumers since competition incentivizes companies to innovate.
