Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 vs 8 Gen 1 Comparison: What Are the Differences?
Qualcomm Has Just Taken the Cover off the New Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Chip That Is Expected to Power Most Flagship Phones in 2023, and It's an Impressive Piece of...
We have summarized all the important differences in the table below:
| Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 | Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Process | 4nm TSMC 4NP (same as A16 Bionic) | 4nm Samsung 4LPX |
| CPU | Kryo CPU next-gen 35 percent faster 40 percent power savings | Kryo CPU |
| CPU cores | 1X prime core (Cortex-X3) running at up to 3.2GHz 4X performance cores at 2.8GHz 3X efficiency cores at 2.0GHz | 1X prime core (Cortex-X2) at up to 3.0GHz 3X performance cores (Cortex-A710) at 2.5GHz 4X efficiency cores (Cortex-A510) at 1.8GHz |
| GPU | Adreno 740 GPU 25 percent faster 45 percent better power efficiency Real-time hardware ray tracing | Adreno 730 GPU |
| ISP | Spectra ISP with real-time semantic segmentation for photos and videos* Supports new Sony and Samsung sensors of up to 200MP 8K, 4K at 120fps, 720p at 960fps video capture | Spectra ISP |
| AI | 4.35X faster | Hexagon DSP |
| Other features | Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3 Dynamic Spatial Audio | Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 |
| Modem | Snapdragon X70 with own AI processor for improved 5G coverage and speed Dual active SIM support | Snapdragon X65 |
While both the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and the 8 Gen 1 are manufactured using 4nm technology, Qualcomm will no longer rely on Samsung's inferior 4LPX node and is switching to a TSMC 4NP manufacturing. This is the same node that Apple is using in its A16 Bionic chip and this in itself is a very promising change.
Snapdagon 8 Gen 2 CPU performance
On the CPU side, Qualcomm quotes up 35% better performance and up to 40% in power savings, and while most of this will be felt in multi-threaded tasks, those are big numbers that we rarely see in a yearly chip update.
It is still an 8-core CPU design, but this time, the Prime core runs even faster at up to 3.2GHz, and the configuration is tweaked: instead of three performance cores, you now have four of them, while the efficiency cores are reduced from four to three.
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Snapdagon 8 Gen 2 GPU performance
Gamers are also treated to quite a few important upgrades. The new Adreno 740 GPU in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is 25% faster and 45% more power efficient, again big numbers.
It also adds support for hardware-based real-time ray tracing with support for the Unreal Engine 5, which means light, shadows and reflections will look more realistic in games and these features would be quickly implemented in the new crop of gaming phones (think Asus for example).
This is also the first mobile chipset to support Vulkan 1.3 APIs.
Alexander Ross has covered the video game industry for a decade, writing deep dives on game design, esports tournaments, VR developments, and gaming culture.
