Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs iPhone 17 Pro Benchmarks

Qualcomm has officially unveiled its latest flagship smartphone processor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, at the Snapdragon Summit. This chip is being touted as the fastest mobile CPU in the world, and our benchmark tests confirm that it not only outperforms Apple’s A19 Pro (found in the iPhone 17 Pro) but completely surpasses it.

Our tests on the reference design phone equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 have shown some seriously impressive results. The chip has proven to be the fastest we have ever tested, with Geekbench 6 scores exceeding 12,000. In comparison, the iPhone 17 Pro only reached scores in the 9,000 range. This showcases a significant improvement over the previous generation, even outperforming the overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

In our benchmark tests, we found that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is a remarkable 30.6% faster than the A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro and 31% faster than the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, surpassing Qualcomm’s own claim of a 20% CPU improvement.

Although single-core figures may not be as outstanding, they are not as crucial. The reference design phone provided by Qualcomm boasted an impressive 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM, but memory performance did not have a significant impact on the Geekbench scores.

In addition to Geekbench 6, we also conducted other tests on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The chip achieved an impressive score of 4,292,032 in AnTuTu, with Qualcomm stating that it can reach 4.5 million. PCMark Work 3.0 Performance yielded an average score of 23,811, while GFXBench showcased 102- and 115fps in the toughest Aztec High test using Open and Vulkan APIs, respectively.

While these numbers are based on a reference design device and may not directly correlate to real-world performance, they do provide a glimpse into the speed and capabilities of upcoming devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. These devices include the Xiaomi 17 series and Samsung Galaxy S26 series.

It is important to note that Qualcomm sponsored our attendance at the Snapdragon Technology Summit, covering travel expenses and meals. However, the company had no influence over the content of our review.