Let’s start with the bad news first. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will not use TSMC’s 3nm process because Apple has already closed all of TSMC’s 3nm bands for the A17 Bionic and M3 chipsets. Therefore, Qualcomm will continue to use TSMC’s 4nm process. Of course, this is not a bad thing, but on paper we can say that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will lag behind the A17 Bionic in terms of pure efficiency.
Key specs of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 leaked
- 3.20 GHz 1x Cortex-X4
- 3.00 GHz 5x Cortex-A720
- 2.00 GHz 2x Cortex-A520
- Adreno 750 GPU
- UFS 4.1 LPDDR5 75000Mbps
We also see UFS 4.1 and LPDDR5 RAM support in the specs leak. Another feature we haven’t seen but can say for sure is the Snapdragon X75 5G modem that Qualcomm recently announced. On the other hand, Geekbench performance results of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 are also included in the leak. Accordingly, SD 8 Gen 3 scored 1930 in the single-core test and 6236 in the multi-core test. At these values, it is well ahead of the current Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and A16 Bionic. However, as we said, this information leak came at a very early period and it is possible that Qualcomm will make many more changes in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which we will see towards the end of the year.