5GHz Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 Underperforms

A smartphone SoC clocked past 5GHz, and yet the numbers on Geekbench feel... underwhelming. Strange, right? That’s the current story around Qualcomm’s latest silicon.

After an attention-grabbing AnTuTu result, the chip surfaced on Geekbench 6.7 inside an unannounced iQOO 16 prototype carrying the model number V2606A. The scores: 3,434 in single-core and 9,334 in multi-core. Those figures read low when stacked against last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — the iQOO 15 posted 3,649 single and 10,682 multi. In plain terms, this early engineering sample actually trails its predecessor on both fronts.

Under the hood the benchmark tags the chip as SM8975, an identifier earlier leaks tied to what’s now being called the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. The silicon is built on TSMC’s 2nm N2P node and uses a 2+3+3 CPU layout. And yes: the two prime cores are listed at 5.01GHz. That makes this the first smartphone SoC to flirt with desktop-level clock speeds. For context, MediaTek’s Dimensity 9600 Pro hit 4.55GHz in a recent run.

The rest of the configuration is hardly timid. The trio of performance cores run at 4.03GHz, efficiency cores at 3.74GHz, and graphics are handled by a new Adreno 850 GPU. All of that reads like a spec sheet built to impress. Reality, however, sometimes prefers firmware and thermal tuning to raw clock numbers.

• Process: TSMC 2nm N2P
• CPU layout: 2+3+3
• Prime cores: 5.01GHz; Perf cores: 4.03GHz; Efficiency cores: 3.74GHz
• GPU: Adreno 850
• Geekbench 6.7: 3,434 (single), 9,334 (multi)
• AnTuTu (reported): ~4.8M+

Why the mismatch? Because this is an engineering sample. Early units frequently ship with incomplete software, unrefined power management and unpolished thermal profiles. Those factors can crush single-thread results or throttle sustained multi-core throughput. Benchmarks are useful snapshots, but they’re sensitive to drivers, governor settings and heat control — elements that manufacturers typically tune hard ahead of launch.

There’s a hint that hardware isn’t the culprit. The same chip recently posted an AnTuTu score north of 4.8 million, a figure that suggests the silicon is capable when conditions are right. So the low Geekbench showing feels more like teething software pains than a fundamental architectural failure.

Benchmarks will keep bouncing until retail firmware lands. Expect better balance between clock speeds and thermals once iQOO and Qualcomm finalize power curves. Until then, the 5GHz headline is a fantastic party trick — but it won’t tell the whole story about everyday performance, battery life or sustained gaming chops. Keep an eye on launch units; that’s when the numbers start to mean something real.