I tested the 7-core Snapdragon 8 Elite and 1 core makes a difference

The Snapdragon 8 Elite powers most of the best Android phones, and brings a vast increase in power for CPU, GPU, and NPU tasks. However, one of the key problems facing Qualcomm is the current trend of thin phones, as the Snapdragon 8 Elite requires better cooling to effectively dissipate heat.

The company’s answer? The 7-core Snapdragon 8 Elite. It is essentially the same chipset but with one performance core removed in favor of better cooling and heat dissipation. It’s ideal for devices like the world’s thinnest foldable — the Oppo Find N5 — which uses the new chipset.

Losing one performance core may be an acceptable sacrifice for the promise of better battery life, but does it deliver? Qualcomm says it is around 14 percent slower than the overclocked 8-core variant, but what do the benchmarks show, and is this a worthy compromise? I tested both variants to find out.

The phones used for testing

It’s worth noting the phones that I used for testing each processor, and the methods used for testing. For the benchmarks, we’ve picked two well-known benchmarks that we also use to benchmark phones for our reviews: GeekBench 6 and 3DMark. More on this below.

Each phone maker has different optimizations in software, and different phones come with varying degrees and types of RAM and storage. To account for these variances, we picked the OnePlus 13 which is powered by the 8-core Snapdragon 8 Elite and has the closest experience to the Oppo Find N5.

The Oppo Find N5 is the first phone to run the new 7-core Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is necessitated by its thin profile that measures just 4.2mm thick when unfolded. I have only spent a couple of days with the new foldable, so it’s too early to talk about overall performance, but many of the findings below are also prevalent in real-world usage.

Testing the difference that 1 core makes

To test the differences between the two chipsets, we ran a series of three benchmarks multiple times on the Oppo Find N5 and calculated the average of the results. We’ve previously tested the OnePlus 13 multiple times so used an average of those results.

Where possible, I’ve also included additional results on devices running both the Snapdragon 8 Elite and other processors, as tested by myself or my colleagues. It’s worth noting that most of these phones also have similar specs, but have differences in the rest of the specs package.

For GeekBench, I ran the CPU and GPU tests, resulting in three scores for single-core and multi-core CPU performance, and GPU performance under heavy loads.

Unsurprisingly, one fewer performance core has a large impact on all tasks. While the CPU performance is in line with the Mediatek Dimensity 9400 — and the Oppo Find N5 runs as smooth as the Find X8 Pro — there is a marked impact on graphical performance.

Looking at last year’s devices, the graphical performance of the 7-core 8 Elite also does not match the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, or the Exynos 2400e. CPU performance is markedly improved, but the GPU performance leaves a lot to be desired.

In the Geekbench 6 test, the Snapdragon 8 Elite 7-core reveals severe throttling in both CPU and GPU performance, but this is just one test: does our next also reveal the same trends? This test is split into two parts: we tested the GPU in each device on the Solar Bay test for performance but also ran the Solar Bay Stress Test to test the battery life under heavy performance needs.

Here the 7-core Snapdragon 8 Elite displays similar trends to the CPU testing, with a 20% reduction in GPU performance. Ultimately this means the Find N5 won’t be as good for gaming — necessitated by the extremely thin profile — as the OnePlus 13 but this will only impact gameplay on the best AAA games.

Overall graphical performance is still improved over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 used in last year’s Galaxy S24 Ultra, but it’s not as vast an improvement as the 8-core variant.

Snapdragon 8 Elite 8-core vs 7-core: Battery

The other area that a processor will impact heavily is the battery life. Optimizations in battery life can mean the difference between four hours and six hours of gameplay, and intensive gaming is a great way to test the ability of each device to operate at sustained peak loads.

To do this, we use the Solar Bay Stress Test, which runs a longer version of the Solar Bay test for twenty minutes. Its core premise is to showcase how a device will perform over extended periods of ray-traced gaming, but it’s also a good indicator of overall graphical performance.

Alongside the score produced, we also log the battery drain to understand the overall impact of 20 minutes of resource-intensive gaming on your battery life. However, considering that each battery has different characteristics and capacities, I’ve standardized the battery drain by approximating the capacity lost in milliampere-hours (mAh).

In effect, a higher battery drain in mAh means the phone can sustain peak gaming performance for a shorter time.

One of the key problems with the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the battery drain under extended peak performance, and the 7-core Snapdragon 8 Elite is designed to offer similar performance while reducing the battery drain.

Looking at the results, there’s a marked improvement in the battery life compared to the OnePlus 13, but that’s mainly indicative of the Snapdragon 8 Elite 8-core variant requiring significantly power than previous years. The best showcase of this is the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which scores 25% higher than the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but drains 30% more battery in the same test.

How much of a difference does 1 core make?

The 8-core version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite is a performance powerhouse, but it drains a lot of battery under extended loads and requires a larger vapor chamber for heat dissipation. For many of the best Android phones, fulfilling these requirements isn’t a problem, but there are plenty of devices where this isn’t feasible.

For them, the 7-core variant exists, which removes a performance core for the promise of better battery life and heat management. It’s meant to enable phones to become even thinner, and will probably be the chipset inside the new Galaxy S25 Edge.

The trade-off is the 10-15% drop in CPU performance which is forgivable, and the bigger drop in GPU performance which is unforgivable. The power requirements and success of the 8-core variant mean expectations are high for an inferior product with the same name, and it feels like this is closer to the Snapdragon 8s Elite than being a true flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite processor.

Branding aside, it’s still great for day-to-day usage, but it lacks that extra punch that makes a phone with the 8-core Snapdragon 8 Elite processor so appealing. It remains to be seen if the battery life is improved enough for this to be a worthwhile trade-off, but I’ll cover this in more detail in my upcoming Find N5 feature.