Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple A18 Pro: Benchmarks and Specs

Qualcomm has launched its 2025 flagship processor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, calling it the "world’s fastest mobile CPU". Last year, Apple's A18 Pro kept the CPU crown for being the most powerful and power-efficient mobile CPU. So, let's go through our benchmark comparison between the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and A18 Pro to find out if Qualcomm has surpassed Apple. On that note, let's check out the findings.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs A18 Pro: Geekbench Score

In a leaked Geekbench listing, running on the Xiaomi 17 Pro, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 scored an impressive 3,831 points in single-core and 11,525 in multi-core. Meanwhile, Apple's last year A18 Pro achieved 3,467 in single-core workloads and 8,550 in multi-threaded tasks, running on the iPhone 16 Pro.

Overall, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is over 10% faster in single-core tasks and about 35% faster in multi-core workloads. Since the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has eight cores vs six on the A18 Pro, the former does much better in heavy multi-threaded tasks. However, despite being a year old, the Apple A18 Pro comes very close to the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs A18 Pro: Specs Comparison

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is fabricated on TSMC's improved 3nm (N3P) process node, while the A18 Pro is built on TSMC's slightly older 3nm (N3E) node. Qualcomm has packed its custom 3rd-gen Oryon CPU on the 8 Elite Gen 5 while Apple has gone with its custom Apple CPU. For graphics, the 8 Elite Gen 5 packs the powerful Adreno 840 GPU whereas the A18 Pro comes with the 6-core Apple GPU.