We have the Galaxy S24s in our hands, all new smartphones from Samsung. This is an opportunity to take stock of the observed performance differences between the Samsung Galaxy S24 (Exynos 2400) and the S24 Ultra (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3).
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra // Source: Robin Wycke – Frandroid
Samsung has decided on a significant change for its new Galaxy S24 series. The Korean company is equipping its Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus models in Europe and India with its own chip, the Exynos 2400. In addition, the highest-end model, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, will feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip.
This choice marks the return of the Exynos chip in Samsung's Galaxy S series, an approach that is being watched with caution. In fact, the Exynos used in the Galaxy S22 had come under criticism for overheating, performance and battery life issues. Nevertheless, Samsung is looking to upgrade its Exynos series with this new iteration.
We decided to include the ROG Phone 8 Pro in this comparison, the latter features Qualcomm's latest high-end chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This gives us a good overview of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's capabilities two different chassis.
The chips in question
The Exynos 2400 has a 10-core processor, including one Cortex-X4 at 3.16 GHz, two Cortex-A720 at 2.9 GHz, three more Cortex-A720 at 2.6 GHz and four Cortex-A520 at low Power consumption and 1.95 GHz. In comparison, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is equipped with an 8-core CPU that runs up to 3.2 GHz for Cortex-X4, 2.9 GHz for Cortex-A720, 2.6 GHz for other Cortex-A720 and 2 .0 GHz for Cortex-A520 offers.
| Exynos 2400 | Samsung Exynos 2400 | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 |
|---|---|---|
| engraving | 4nm (Samsung 4LPP+) | 4nm (TSMC N4) |
| Prime | 1x Cortex-X4 at 3.2 GHz | 1x Cortex-X4 at 3.3 GHz |
| large | 2x Cortex-A720 at 2.9 GHz | 5x Cortex-A720 at 3.2 GHz |
| center | 3x Cortex-A720 at 2.6 GHz | – |
| Small | 4x Cortex-A520 at 2 GHz | 2x Cortex-A520 at 2.3 GHz |
| GPU | Samsung Xclipse 940 based on AMD RDNA 3 | Qualcomm Adreno 750 |
In terms of graphics performance, the Exynos 2400 features an Xclipse 940 GPU based on AMD RDNA 3 architecture, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 comes with an Adreno 740 GPU.
Our results
So what's the point? Let's start with the positive aspects. The Exynos SoC recorded impressive performance in Geekbench 6 with a score of 2072 in single-threaded and 6565 in multi-threaded, easily beating the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 average. However, this score is achieved with lower power consumption, which is slightly is more important. Furthermore, we do not observe this trend in the other benchmarks.
| Model | Samsung Galaxy S24 | Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra | Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| AnTuTu 10 | 1722457 | 1875639 | 2105923 |
| AnTuTu CPU | 427031 | 457922 | 442704 |
| AnTuTu GPU | 680048 | 741621 | 880348 |
| AnTuTu MEM | 323844 | 366871 | 427773 |
| AnTuTu UX | 291534 | 309225 | 355098 |
| PC Mark 3.0 | 18232 | 17957 | 21763 |
| 3DMark Wild Life Extreme | 4294 | 4571 | 5178 |
| 3DMark Wild Life Extreme average frame rate | 25.71 FPS | 27.38 FPS | 31 FPS |
| GFXBench Aztec Vulkan/Metal High (on-screen/off-screen) | 96/65 FPS | 99/83 FPS | 122/90 FPS |
| GFXBench Chase (on-screen/off-screen) | 99/111 FPS | 105/132 FPS | 135/156 FPS |
| GFXBench Manhattan 3.0 (on-screen/off-screen) | 119/248 FPS | 120/338 FPS | 165/378 FPS |
| Geekbench 6 single core | 2072 | 1985 | 2213 |
| Geekbench 6 multi-core | 6565 | 6409 | 6973 |
| Geekbench 6 Compute (Vulkan) | 15568 | 17263 | 16583 |
| Sequential read/write | 2170 / 996 MB/s | 2500 / 1190 MB/s | N/C |
In practice, the performance of the two chips varies. Although the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 often outperforms the Exynos 2400 in many benchmarks, particularly in terms of graphics performance, there are situations where the Exynos 2400 performs better, such as in the case of ray tracing, certainly thanks to the expertise of AMD (the 3DMark Solar). This can be measured using the Bay benchmark.
Still, it's clear that the Galaxy S23's Exynos 2400 performs worse overall than the Galaxy S24 Ultra's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. However, with higher consumption and lower performance, there is one difference between it and its predecessor Exynos 2200. In particular, no overheating problems were observed with the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus. In addition, the performance difference is not that big. We have to carry out our tests to the end, especially the autonomy tests, which take a little more time with our protocol. Maybe the difference will be more noticeable.
It's also important to note that the Galaxy S24 (and 24 Plus) and S24 Ultra have different body designs. The Galaxy S24 Ultra benefits from a more advanced and massive cooling system and could therefore achieve better results in benchmarks. We will also be careful to observe the behavior of the network hook and WiFi since the two SoCs share different modems. Same observation for photography and video, with different image signal processors (ISP).
Finally, the remarkable performance of the ROG Phone 8 Pro deserves special attention, it outperforms all Galaxy S24 models regardless of the chip used. This suggests possible surprises from other smartphone manufacturers such as OnePlus, Oppo, Xiaomi, Honor, etc.
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