Last month, we used a Realme GT8 Pro prototype to run early benchmarks of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The phone was officially unveiled last week and is gearing up for a global launch next month, so we’re ready to do some proper benchmarking.
Even better, we’ve reviewed a number of competing flagships in the meantime, so we can get a better look at the key chipsets for the next twelve months. There are those that run on the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 as the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max. Others chose dimensions 9500, such as the Vivo X300 Pro. And inside the iPhone 17 Pro Max is the Apple A19 Pro — Apple’s chipsets are no longer front-facing, but they’re still the usual yardstick against which all others are measured.
We’re also including previous-generation chips as a baseline to measure performance improvements.
Let’s start with the generalist test, Intoto. We are in the process of moving to Antato V11, but we are also including V10 tests for continuity. In V11, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the clear leader within the Realme GT8 Pro – it has a 9% lead over the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max. Keep in mind that Intuitive measures things like memory performance, not just raw compute power, so a single chipset depends on the surrounding hardware.
The new version of the benchmark gives the Snapdragon chip a similar lead inside the Oppo Find X9 Pro at 9500, while the MediaTek chip is slightly ahead in the older V10 benchmark. To compare with the previous generation Elite, we have to turn to the V10 – here the GT8 Pro beats the GT7 Pro by about 88 percent.
Focusing only on the CPU, the Geekbench 6 Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 loses to the Apple A19 Pro by 6% in the same core test. This is a narrow margin and even disappears in the multi-core test, which is within the margin of error.
Hell, Arm’s new C1-Ultra core lags behind the 9500, which is 9% slower than Snapdragon in single-core performance. The same 9% difference is observed in the multi-core test. The dimensions are closer to the original Snapdragon 8 Elite CPU than the 9500 new 8 Elite Gen 5.
Next is the GPU. When it can run at full tilt, the new Adreno 840 tops the charts by a small margin over the Arm G1-Ultra—well, the Realm GT8 Pro beats the Vivo X300 Pro, while the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max falls behind.
Why does Xiaomi keep losing to the circle, even though both use the same chipset? We think it has to do with how each company built the performance curves for their respective phones.
Before you declare the winner the winner, click the second tab – the benchmark actually runs several times and reports both the highest and lowest scores. The highest score usually comes when the phone is fresh and cool, the lowest after thermal throttling.
This is where the Realme GT8 Pro disappoints the most – throttling reduces performance by a whopping 67%. The Xiaomi 17 Pro Max also loses some speed, but only by 40%, leaving Xiaomi ahead of the curve. Apple A19 Pro and Dimension 9500 show better endurance performance than its 8 Elite Gen 5 competitors. The biggest surprise is the Oppo Find X8 Ultra with last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, staying ahead of its newly launched competition.
We’ll wrap things up with ray tracing – by far the most computationally expensive way to render graphics. Arm put a lot of work into its second-generation hardware accelerator and it shows – a massive improvement over the Dimension 9400 (+). The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is also showing gains, albeit more moderate ones.
We’re working on an in-depth review of the Realme GT8 Pro, and we’ll have more to say about its performance and thermal management—and, of course, everything else about the phone.
