What you need to know
- An early Geekbench 6 result appeared for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra ahead of its release.
- While the scores are lower than other Snapdragon 8 Elite handsets, the system information report reveals Samsung may be overclocking its chip.
- Two of the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s eight CPU cores appear to be overclocked, potentially for a Snapdragon 8 Elite “for Galaxy” branded chip.
Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S25 series is widely expected to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. However, it has been unclear whether Samsung will use an overclocked version of the processor, much like the “for Galaxy” versions of Snapdragon chips in previous Galaxy phones. There’s now a good chance that we’ll see a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy in the Samsung Galaxy S25 thanks to prerelease Geekbench 6 scores.
The benchmark scores showed up for the international model of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra in the Geekbench 6 database, as spotted by GSMArena. The scores themselves aren’t that impressive — the benchmark results below are lower than what we’ve tested with other Snapdragon 8 Elite phones, like the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro — but the clock speeds of the chip are higher.
According to the system information report on the Geekbench 6 results page, two of the Snapdragon 8 Elite cores are clocked at 4.47 GHz, which is slightly higher than the default 4.32 GHz speed. Meanwhile, the six-core cluster remains at the usual 3.53 GHz speed. This suggests that Samsung will ship an overclocked version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip on the Galaxy S25 series.
As for the performance dip, that is all but certainly attributed to the fact that these benchmarks were recorded on pre-release hardware and software. It’s likely that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra’s final benchmark scores will end up higher than these early figures. Another factor to consider is that the Galaxy S25 Ultra tested was a unit with 12GB of RAM, and Samsung could offer a 16GB version with faster performance.
Though this benchmark leak does suggest Samsung is working on overclocking the Snapdragon 8 Elite for its next flagships, it isn’t a guarantee. This could simply be a test to see whether an overclocked version meets Samsung’s quality standards. However, this late in the release cycle — the Samsung Galaxy S25 series is expected to debut this month — it’s likely that this benchmark overclock is indicative of the company’s plans.
Regardless of whether Samsung overclocks the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, it’s significantly faster than the last-gen Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Additionally, prior rumors predict that the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip will power the Galaxy S25 series in all markets.
