Samsung may use overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite ‘for Galaxy’ in Galaxy S25 series

what you need to know
- Early test results from Geekbench 6 have emerged for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra ahead of its release.
- Although the score is lower than other Snapdragon 8 Elite phones, the system information report indicates that Samsung may have overclocked its chip.
- Two of the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s eight CPU cores appear to be overclocked, possibly for the Snapdragon 8 Elite “for Galaxy” branded chips.
Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S25 series is widely expected to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. However, it’s unclear whether Samsung will use an overclocked version of the processor, like the “for Galaxy” version of the Snapdragon chip in previous Galaxy phones. Thanks to pre-released Geekbench 6 scores, there’s now a good chance we’ll see Galaxy’s Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Samsung Galaxy S25.
GSMArena discovered that the Geekbench 6 database shows benchmark scores for the international model of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. The scores themselves aren’t all that impressive—the benchmark results below are lower than what we’ve tested on other Snapdragon 8 Elite phones like the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro—but the chip has a higher clock speed.
According to the system information report on the Geekbench 6 results page, two of the Snapdragon 8 Elite cores are clocked at 4.47 GHz, which is slightly higher than the default 4.32 GHz speed. Meanwhile, the six-core cluster maintains the usual 3.53 GHz speed. This shows that Samsung will equip the Galaxy S25 series with an overclocked version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.
As for performance degradation, this is almost certainly due to the fact that these benchmarks were recorded on pre-release hardware and software. It’s likely that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra’s final benchmark scores will be higher than these early figures. Another factor to consider is that the Galaxy S25 Ultra tested had 12GB of RAM, and Samsung could offer a faster 16GB version.
While this benchmark leak does suggest that Samsung is overclocking the Snapdragon 8 Elite for its next flagship, it’s not a guarantee. This might just be a test to see if the overclocked version meets Samsung’s quality standards. However, being so late in the launch cycle – the Samsung Galaxy S25 series is expected to debut this month – this baseline overclock is likely indicative of the company’s plans.
Regardless of whether Samsung overclocks the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, it’s significantly faster than the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.