Snapdragon’s next flagship chip could hit the 5GHz mark

Qualcomm and MediaTek are both gearing up to launch their latest flagship processors. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 series and the MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro are expected to feature improvements across the board. Now, a new leak is shedding some light on the core arrangement and clock speeds of the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and the Dimensity 9600 Pro.

According to a Weibo post by Digital Chat Station (DCS), the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro, model number SM8975, could be called the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 instead. The extremely long (pun intended) and unnecessarily weird name notwithstanding, Qualcomm’s next flagship chip seems set to break the 5GHz barrier for smartphone chipsets.

The leak further states that the octa-core processor will be manufactured using TSMC’s 2nm process. It will feature two prime cores clocked at 5.01GHz, three performance cores clocked at 4.03GHz, and three efficiency cores clocked at 3.74GHz. The chipset will use the Adreno 850 GPU, which will come with six GPU slices, according to previous leaks.

In the same post, DCS also shared details of the upcoming MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro chipset. It will also be manufactured using TSMC’s 2nm process and will be an octa-core processor, per the leak. It could use two Canyon cores clocked at 4.55GHz, three Gelas-b performance cores clocked at 4.35GHz, and three Gelas efficiency cores clocked at 3.10GHz. The chipset will use the ARM Mali G2 Ultra NX MC12 GPU, according to the leak.

Apart from the DCS leak, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 was also recently spotted on Geekbench (via NotebookCheck). Per that benchmark listing, the processor scored 3,434 points in the single-core test and 9,334 in the multi-core test. That’s an underwhelming result when compared with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. However, it’s worth noting that Geekbench scores obtained with pre-production devices and firmware should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Similarly, the Dimensity 9600 Pro’s recently spotted Geekbench run showed a single-core score of 2,653 points and a multi-core score of 7,516 points — again, underwhelming when compared with the Dimensity 9500. And again, it’s worth taking with a pinch of salt given it’s a pre-production device.

Qualcomm is expected to announce the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipsets at the Snapdragon Summit next month. Meanwhile, MediaTek could also announce the Dimensity 9600 Pro next month, keeping in line with the launch timeline of the Dimensity 9500 last year.