Building on the success of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 delivers even more powerful performance and efficiency. With the launch just around the corner, exciting leaks and benchmark results have surfaced about the flagship processor. Here’s everything we know about the new chipset ahead of its official launch.

The new Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 will be quite powerful

Qualcomm’s new chip will be called the “Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.” This naming may seem a bit strange, as last year’s model was simply called the Snapdragon 8 Elite. However, Qualcomm is returning to its previous numbering scheme with this name:

• 8 Gen 1 (first generation)
• 8 Gen 2 (second generation)
• 8 Gen 3 (third generation)
• Snapdragon 8 Elite (fourth generation)
• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (fifth generation)

Qualcomm aims to eliminate confusion by returning to its previous naming tradition. At the Snapdragon Summit on September 23rd, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is expected to be unveiled, along with a slightly lower-performance Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. The more affordable Snapdragon 8s Gen 5 will complete the series in mid-2026.

Qualcomm hasn’t yet switched to TSMC’s 2nm manufacturing process. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will continue to use the 3nm process with its improved ‘N3P’ technology. This technology offers 5% better performance than the previous generation’s ‘N3E’ process at the same power consumption.

The chip features a 2+6 CPU core architecture like last year’s. However, according to the Xiaomi 17 Pro’s Geekbench listing, two custom Orion cores operate at 4.61 GHz, while six custom Orion cores operate at 3.63 GHz. The leaked Geekbench listing for the Galaxy S26 Edge shows the main cores reaching 4.74 GHz.

One of the main reasons for the performance increase will be the larger L2 and L3 cache structure. While the previous generation had 24MB of cache, the new model has a total of 32MB of cache (16MB L2, 16MB L3).

The new Elite chip will come with the new Adreno 840 GPU clocked at 1.20GHz, while the previous generation used a 1.10GHz Adreno 830. Some rumors suggest that the new NPU could reach processing speeds of up to 100 TOPS. If this is true, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will have a higher AI processing speed than many laptop-class chips.

A smartphone believed to be the Xiaomi 17 Pro recently appeared on Geekbench 6.4 with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The chip scores 3,831 in single-core and 11,525 in multi-core, providing a significant performance boost over the Snapdragon 8 Elite (3,179 / 10,114).

So, what are your thoughts on this? Share your thoughts in the comments.