Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 3: Benchmarks and Specs

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was a special chip because it was the last Qualcomm flagship to feature Kryo CPU cores. While Qualcomm continues to use the Kryo CPU on other chipsets, the flagship Elite series embraced the custom Oryon CPU from the very beginning. The latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 packs the 3rd-gen Oryon CPU, which delivers a massive leap in performance. So in this article, we have compared the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 across Geekbench and other tests.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 3: Geekbench Score

In the Geekbench 6 CPU test, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 scored 3,831 in single-core and 11,525 in multi-core. This Geekbench score was achieved on the Xiaomi 17 Pro in an early run. On the other hand, the two-year-old Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 scored 2,183 in single-core and 6,434 in multi-core. 

Within just two years, Qualcomm has improved the single-core performance by 75%, and multi-core performance by 80%, which is huge. This has been made possible due to the 3rd-gen Oryon CPU available inside the 8 Elite Gen 5, which is much more powerful than the older Kryo CPU inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Put simply, after the introduction of the Oryon CPU in 2023, no other Kryo-based Qualcomm chipset can come close to the Elite-series chipsets.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 3: Specs Comparison

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is built on TSMC's latest 3nm (N3P) process node, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is manufactured on TSMC's older 4nm node. The other major difference is that the 8 Elite Gen 5 packs the Nuvia-designed Oryon CPU cores while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 uses older Kryo CPU cores, which are based on Arm's Cortex CPU cores. On the graphics front, you have the Adreno 840 GPU on the 8 Elite Gen 5 and the Adreno 750 GPU on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.