Image: Qualcomm
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon CPU is a huge upgrade for mobile gaming on Android devices.
Qualcomm has officially unveiled its latest flagship CPU for Android phones: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The chip is focused on mobile gaming with new upgrades in AI, audio and more to allow players the smoothest gameplay possible on their phones. The company even claims that its new CPU can play games at up to a hefty 240fps with improved raytracing.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 specs
Let’s talk specs. According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s GPU is 25% faster than its predecessor, with 25% more power efficiency and 40% better raytracing capabilities. While percentages are nice, we also have some hard numbers for its technical specs: Its eight-core processor has a Cortex-X4 prime core running up to 3.3 GHz, five performance cores for up to 3.2 GHz and two efficiency cores clocked up to 2.3 GHz. For memory, the chip has LPDDR5x at up to 4800MHz for 24GB storage. The chip also supports Wi-Fi 7 at up to 6GHz, with an X75 5G modem.
It’s a pretty powerful chip for Android devices, that’s for sure. However, its power isn't only sourced from robust hardware. It also comes from generative AI tech. Snapdragon's AI engine supports multi-modal generative AI models, and it comes with a chatbot that accepts text, image or voice input and talks back to the user. The chip also houses the AI image generator Stable Diffusion, which can now generate a picture in less than a second. Its previous iteration took about 15 seconds.
This generative AI also fills in pictures when you zoom out on them, so you can re-crop them at different angles. On videos, its abilities are pretty remarkable; it can erase entire objects from a video with a single tap. All of that hardware power definitely helps power the AI engine, but this chip is being marketed with powerful gaming in mind just as much as seamless photography.
To that end, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 supports gaming at up to 240fps on 240Hz displays, with Unreal Engine 5.2 support and Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0 helping to generate frames for smoother gameplay. As for the devices that actually use this chip, Qualcomm has announced that devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will become available over the next few weeks. Asus, Sony, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi, Honor and Redmi are just a few of the phone makers partnering with Qualcomm for this chip.
It looks like mobile gaming is about to get a significant upgrade across the board with a new generation of chipsets. Even Apple has announced that its iPhone 15 Pro is meant to be a gaming device of sorts with a powerful new A17 Pro processor, capable of running modern games like Death Stranding Director’s Cut and Resident Evil Village.
