Home > Smartphone processors comparison > Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs A15 Bionic – what's better?

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs A15 Bionic

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
VS
A15 Bionic
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
A15 Bionic

We compared the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (Adreno 750) with the older 6-core Apple A15 Bionic (Apple A15 GPU) SoC. Here you will find the pros and cons of each chip, technical specs, and comprehensive tests in benchmarks, like AnTuTu and Geekbench.

  1. Review
  2. Differences
  3. Benchmarks
  4. AnTuTu v11
  5. GeekBench 6
  6. Specs
  7. Comments

Review

General comparison of performance, power consumption, and other indicators
CPU Performance
Single and multi-core processor tests
Gaming Performance
GPU performance in games and OpenCL/Vulkan
Battery life
Efficiency of battery consumption
NanoReview Score
Overall chip score

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
  • Supports 125% higher memory bandwidth (76.8 against 34.1 GB/s)
  • Shows significantly better (up to 66%) AnTuTu 11 score – 2345K vs 1413K
  • Performs 62% better in floating-point computations
  • Has 2 more cores
  • Has a smaller size transistor (4 versus 5 nm)
  • Better instruction set architecture
Pros of Apple A15 Bionic
  • Higher GPU frequency (~34%)

Benchmarks

Performance tests in popular benchmarks
SoC:
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
vs
A15 Bionic

AnTuTu 11

The AnTuTu Benchmark measures CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O performance in different scenarios
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 +66%
2345563
A15 Bionic
1413275
CPU 700525 410975
GPU 805478 370837
Memory 296043 164151
UX 543517 467312
Total score 2345563 1413275
Samples [443 tests] [69 tests]
AnTuTu results from iOS and Android are not directly comparable! They won't affect NanoReview scores.
Submit your AnTuTu result

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
Multi-Core Score
Asset compression 256.8 MB/sec 208.1 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 190.9 pages/sec 122.9 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 209.1 Mpixels/sec 139.1 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 168.6 images/sec 125.1 images/sec
HDR 208.6 Mpixels/sec 179.4 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 24 images/sec 22.3 images/sec
Photo processing 63.6 images/sec 53.2 images/sec
Ray tracing 7.27 Mpixels/sec 6.26 Mpixels/sec
Samples 139 tests 37 tests
Compute Score (GPU)
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
15378
A15 Bionic +33%
20400
Background blur 26.9 images/sec 35.4 images/sec
Face detection 13.2 images/sec 44.8 images/sec
Horizon detection 0.7 Gpixels/sec 0.62 Gpixels/sec
Edge detection 0.61 Gpixels/sec 0.82 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian blur 0.98 Gpixels/sec 0.84 Gpixels/sec
Feature matching 0.18 Gpixels/sec 0.3 Gpixels/sec
Stereo matching 43.4 Gpixels/sec 71.1 Gpixels/sec
Particle physics 3083.6 FPS 2198.2 FPS
API OpenCL Metal
Samples 90 tests 19 tests
Compute results use different APIs (Metal vs Vulkan/OpenCL) and are not directly comparable!

3DMark

A cross-platform benchmark that assesses graphics performance in Vulkan (Metal)
3DMark Steel Nomad Light
Score 1652 -
Stability 79% -
Graphics test 12 FPS -
3DMark Solar Bay
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 +118%
8190
A15 Bionic
3765
Score 8190 3765
Stability 72% 71%
Graphics test 31 FPS 14 FPS
Section 1 36 FPS 19 FPS
Section 2 31 FPS 14 FPS
Section 3 26 FPS 9 FPS
3DMark Wild Life Extreme
Score 4676 2854
Stability - 76%
Graphics test 27 FPS 17 FPS

PCMark 3.0

Benchmark for evaluating overall system performance in everyday workloads
PCMark 3.0
Web score 16536 -
Video editing score 7905 -
Data manipulation score 14260 -
Photo editing score 31248 -
Writing score 19168 -
Phones tested 41 models -

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-30 (EA Fran)AnTuTu 122452758
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-30 (Nyvronis)AnTuTu 122649328
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-29 -> Alejandro SorinAnTuTu 122597186
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-29 (Gadji TΓ¦mΓ¦v)AnTuTu 122438906
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-29 (Ratiii)Geekbench 7 CPU1995 / 6875
Add View all (607)
Apple A15 Bionic
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-25 -> op1Geekbench 6 CPU2168 / 4988
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-23 -> HotPowerAnTuTu 111184759
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-19 -> HotPowerGeekbench 6 GPU21284
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-19 (Vova)AnTuTu 111297615
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-19 -> HotPowerGeekbench 6 CPU2423 / 5985
Add View all (116)

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and A15 Bionic

CPU

Architecture 1x 3.3 GHz – Cortex-X4
3x 3.15 GHz – Cortex-A720
2x 2.96 GHz – Cortex-A720
2x 2.27 GHz – Cortex-A520		 2x 3.23 GHz – Avalanche
4x 2.02 GHz – Blizzard
Cores 8 6
Frequency 3300 MHz 3230 MHz
Instruction set ARMv9.2-A ARMv8.5-A
L1 cache - 256 KB
L2 cache 1 MB 12 MB
L3 cache 12 MB -
Process 4 nanometers 5 nanometers
Transistor count - 15 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) 8 W 6 W
Manufacturing TSMC TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Adreno 750 Apple A15 GPU
Architecture Adreno 700 Apple Bionic GPU
GPU frequency 903-1000 MHz 1338 MHz
Pipelines 6 5
Shading units 256 128
Total shaders 1536 640
FLOPS 2774 Gigaflops 1712.6 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.3 -
OpenCL version 2.0 -
DirectX version 12.1 -

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) Hexagon Apple Neural Engine
NPU theoretical performance - 15.8 TOPS

Memory

Memory type LPDDR5X LPDDR4X
Memory frequency 4800 MHz 2133 MHz
Bus 4x 16 Bit 4x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 76.8 Gb/s 34.1 Gb/s
Max size 24 GB 6 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type UFS 4.0, UFS 4.1 NVMe
Max display resolution 3840 x 2160 2732 x 2048
Max camera resolution 1x 200MP -
Video capture 8K at 30FPS, 4K at 120FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video playback 8K at 60FPS, 4K at 120FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video codecs - H.264
- H.265
- AV1
- VP8
- VP9		 - H.264
- H.265
- VP8
- VP9
- Motion JPEG
Audio codecs - AAC
- AIFF
- CAF
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV		 - AAC
- AAX
- AAX+
- AC-3
- AIFF
- CAF
- E-AC-3
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV

Connectivity

Modem Snapdragon X75 -
4G support LTE Cat. 24 LTE Cat. 24
5G support Yes Yes
Download speed Up to 10000 Mbps Up to 7500 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 3500 Mbps Up to 3000 Mbps
Wi-Fi 7 6
Bluetooth 5.4 5.0
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, NAVIC GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS

Info

Announced October 2023 September 2021
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number SM8650-AB, SM8650-AC APL1W07
Official page Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 official site -
Successor - Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 - Apple A19 Pro
Further details
Notes on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3:
    - Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy has a 100 MHz higher CPU and GPU clock speed. It has a higher GPU performance rate of up to 3072 Gigaflops.

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
807 (70.3%)
341 (29.7%)
Total votes: 1148

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Comments

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