Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 leak shows you might actually not want the Pro variant

Qualcomm may unveil two Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 series processors later this year. We’ve already heard the first details about the apparent Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Gen 6 Pro, but a new leak has given us more clear information about the standard chipset.

weibo tipster digital chat station Here are some more details about the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. See the machine-translated post below.

This latest post includes some new details, starting with the “new generation” Orion CPUs. This suggests that the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite could share the same fundamental CPU architecture as the Gen 6 Pro model. However, the leaker reiterates that the standard model has 6MB of system-level cache and the Pro chip beats it in this regard.

A major GPU upgrade on the cards

We also previously heard that the vanilla Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip could feature an Adreno 845 GPU with 12MB of dedicated graphics cache. However, Digital Chat Station now adds that this GPU has a sliced ​​architecture with six slices. The Snapdragon 8 Elite introduces this new GPU architecture in late 2024, which splits the GPU into multiple separate slices. Each of these slices has its own individual clock speed, shader cores, and fixed-function blocks. On paper this would be a significant improvement over the Snapdragon 8 Elite (three slices) and Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 (two slices), although we’re not sure how it compares to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Still, the rumored six-slice design paired with 12MB of dedicated graphics memory could create a chipset with a more powerful GPU than Qualcomm’s first Elite chip.

Digital Chat Station previously posted details such as the 2nm TSMC design, CPU core layout, and RAM/storage support. However, he also noted at the time that the Pro version would offer more cache (for example, 18 MB of graphics memory), as well as support for the latest RAM and storage specs.

The standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 still looks like a powerful flagship phone processor in its own right. So you can get a powerful chip without opting for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro variant. Still, we’re confident that Qualcomm doesn’t make any massive downgrades (for example, cameras or AI) compared to the Pro chip.