Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 tests: Galaxy S26 Ultra tops CPU, POCO F9 Pro leads GPU stability
Android Authority tested four phones across Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 family. Galaxy S26 Ultra led CPU, POCO F9 Pro had best GPU stability, and POCO phones ran hottest.
Snapdragon 8 series is Qualcomm's top-tier smartphone processor line, offering performance, connectivity, camera features and AI features. The family expanded in 2026, after the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 appeared in late 2025, and before the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 series.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the POCO F9 Ultra is the top chip most Android OEMs can buy, with an octa-core 4.6GHz Oryon CPU and an Adreno GPU with three compute slices. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy in the Galaxy S26 Ultra is effectively an overclocked version for Samsung devices, with CPU peak speed of 4.74GHz. It is typically restricted to Samsung, though Qualcomm tends to release small quantities of overclocked chips to other OEMs in the second half of each year under the Leading Version name.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5V in the POCO F9 Pro is the latest Gen 5 chip and is essentially a downgraded version of the 8 Elite Gen 5. Its GPU has only two compute slices, suggesting reduced peak performance, but it retains the same 4.6GHz CPU and 3nm TSMC design as the full Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. At the bottom of the tier is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 in the OnePlus 15R, which lacks the Elite branding, uses a similar CPU with a top speed of 3.8GHz, has an Adreno GPU with two slices, and lacks the high-performance memory attached to the 8 Elite Gen 5 GPU.
In GeekBench 6 CPU tests, the Galaxy S26 Ultra came first in both single-core and multi-core performance. Its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy has Prime CPU cores about 140MHz faster than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5V cores. The single-core win was narrow, but the multi-core gap widened because Samsung can call on two higher-clocked cores. The OnePlus 15R was last in both tests, at least partly because of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5's slower clock speeds.
The POCO F9 Pro and its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5V ranked a distant third. Qualcomm had previously said this processor had the same CPU clock speed and core count as the full 8 Elite Gen 5, so Android Authority suggested the chipset either has a smaller cache or POCO used more conservative software tuning on the Pro than on the Ultra.
GPU stress tests produced a different order. In the Wild Life Stress Test and Wild Life Extreme Stress Test, the POCO F9 Pro had the best stability at about 76 to 77 percent across both tests. The POCO F9 Ultra offered 69 to 70 percent stability, and the Galaxy S26 Ultra maintained just 53 to 54 percent stability. The POCO F9 Pro started behind the Galaxy S26 Ultra in both tests but finished ahead of it by the end. The OnePlus 15R was last in both stress tests but maintained 64 to 65 percent stability, meaning the Samsung phone finished higher while the OnePlus device lost less performance over time.
The POCO phones lost less performance over time than the Samsung and OnePlus devices, but they ran hotter. The POCO F9 Ultra reached the highest temperatures in both tests, with average temperatures of 44 to 45 degrees Celsius and peak temperatures of 52 degrees Celsius. Xiaomi's Pro phone was close, with an average temperature of 43 degrees Celsius and a peak temperature of 50 degrees Celsius in both tests. Android Authority said that was not great for comfort or for either phone's battery.