Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, this year the 8 Elite will be added Extreme Generation 6 too. The company describes both new phone chips as flagships, and the differences in specifications are relatively minor, mostly limited to improved AI processing, video capture, and gaming performance on the Extreme model.
Both Gen 6 chips are built on a 2nm process and have a lot in common, including their modems, display specifications, security features, GPS, and memory and storage support. Qualcomm no longer publishes detailed core breakdowns of its silicon, but the CPU details provided are identical, with two large cores up to 5 GHz and six performance cores up to 4 GHz. Despite that, the Extreme is described as having slightly higher performance across its CPU, GPU, and NPU.
Some differences are clearer. The 8 Elite Extreme is capable of superior video capture, including 8K at 60 fps, 4K at 240 fps, and support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec. A larger shared memory pool for the NPU should also drive faster, more efficient AI performance on the Extreme chip, while dedicated AI die cores on the GPU (and more memory) should slightly boost gaming performance when using AI features.
With seemingly similar core performance, the jump to the Extreme chip is relatively minor, so it will be interesting to see which chips manufacturers use for which phones. Motorola is the first to jump on board, confirming that its recently announced Signature 27 flagship will use the Extreme chip. Qualcomm has announced that Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo, Honor, iQoo, Nubia, OnePlus, Redmi, Redmagic and ZTE will also adopt the two chips.
