3 ways the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is actually worse than last year’s chip

Qualcomm is talking a big AI game with two flagship chipsets this year, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. But a closer look at the differences between these two chips reveals that the Extreme nomenclature is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting. Rather, it might be more realistic to call the regular version of the chip the 8 Elite Lite Gen 6.

While the two flagship processors share the same 5GHz peak clock speeds, new GPU architecture, and many of the same new AI features, the “regular” version of the Gen 6 misses out on a few of Qualcomm’s most impressive technologies. The list includes cutting-edge video codecs, Matrix cores for AI graphics, and 50% more local memory to support on-device AI models.

While this might make sense from a cost perspective, a closer look at the spec sheet reveals that some of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6’s missing features are already available on the previous generation’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Does this make the chip a downgrade from last year? Well, it depends on what you plan to use your phone for.

No High Performance Memory for games

Perhaps the biggest feature missing from the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, found on Gen 5 flagship phones, is High Performance Memory (HPM). On the Gen 5, this is 18MB of tightly coupled GPU cache, while the Gen 5 V-Series has 12MB of HPM. The Gen 6 has none; only the Extreme variant does this this year.

Normally, the Adreno GPU shares access to the rest of the system’s DDR memory pool, but the available bandwidth can become a bottleneck with high-quality models and textures, antialiasing, and advanced graphical effects. HPM is a small graphics memory cache dedicated solely to the GPU, designed to alleviate potential bottlenecks. According to Qualcomm, HPM reduces latency and improves memory efficiency by up to 10% when processing more demanding workloads, serving as a boon for visual fidelity, improved performance, and power efficiency for longer play sessions.

The only drawback of HPM is that it appears to require game developers to code for it specifically, essentially telling the GPU what to store in this fast memory to speed up their game. Thanks to Qualcomm’s Neural Fusion development efforts, new games built on Unity and Unreal Engine can benefit without code modifications, but other engines must be built specifically for HPM if they handle raw graphics via Qualcomm’s custom Vulkan implementation. With that in mind, the games and emulators you prefer to play might not support HPM at this time.

Perhaps Qualcomm hadn’t seen the uptake it initially hoped for, and therefore feels relatively safe cutting this feature from the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. Or perhaps moving to LPDDR6 will lessen the need for HPM. Alternatively, the regular Gen 6 could stand to lose out on both frame rate and energy efficiency compared to the Extreme variant. In any case, for a flagship chipset to last the next five years or more, the absence of HPM and Matrix cores for AI upscaling is a pretty big omission for serious mobile gamers.

Slower 8K frame rates

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme supports 8K60 video recording and ultra-high-speed 4K240 slow motion. These drop to 8K30 and 4K120 on the regular model, representing a direct downgrade from the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which supported 8K60 recording.

Furthermore, concrete color standards — specifically 10-bit color depth photo/video capture, Rec. 2020 color gamut, and Google Ultra HDR support — have been stripped from the Gen 6’s spec sheet, replacing precise technical guarantees with generic “Elite Color Engine” marketing. It doesn’t mean some of these aren’t supported, but Qualcomm is definitely pushing high-end video requirements towards the Extreme chip, while these capabilities were already listed on last year’s Gen 5.

If there’s a silver lining, the standard Gen 6 matches the Gen 5’s 4K120 capture while bumping 1080p slow-motion up to 960 FPS (over the Gen 5’s 480 FPS). But if you want 4K recording at 240 frames per second, you’ll have to shell out for the Extreme.

APV encode goes AWOL

A slightly more niche video feature, but one that will be felt keenly in some quarters, is the absence of the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec. APV (Advanced Professional Video) is an open-source, royalty-free video codec designed specifically for professional video capture, production, and editing workflows. You could think of it as a rival to Apple ProRes.

Unlike distribution codecs (such as H.264, HEVC/H.265, or AV1), which heavily compress video to reduce file sizes for streaming or playback, APV prioritizes maximum visual quality and computational speed for post-production editing. It compresses each frame individually and scales from 10-bit to 16-bit depth, supporting 4:2:2, 4:4:4, and 4:4:4:4 chroma subsampling (including alpha channels). This combination preserves up to 64 times as much color information per pixel as standard 8-bit consumer video, preventing color banding and protecting dynamic range during heavy HDR tone mapping or Log color grading.

Removing a low-complexity mezzanine codec like APV deprives videographers of a format explicitly built for post-production on smartphones. Without native hardware acceleration for APV, users can no longer record high-bitrate, multi-stream raw-like video that imports smoothly into software like DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro without heavy computer transcoding. It might be a niche feature, but it’s undoubtedly a premium one.

Speaking of codecs, the Extreme version also supports H.266 (VVC) decoding, while the regular Gen 6 does not.

A side-grade for affordable flagships?

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is clearly designed to help keep a lid on the spiraling costs of cutting-edge mobile processors. While downgrades relative to the Extreme model seem like a fair compromise, missing features from last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 are harder to forgive. Qualcomm’s push to differentiate the Extreme model may end up resulting in mainstream flagship phones that aren’t as capable as models already on the market.

On that note, it’s also worth considering whether performance is likely to be that much better either. Qualcomm’s custom Oryon cores don’t appear to have been beefed up with any major new features or number-crunching capabilities in the Gen 6. Instead, the bigger change is the tweaks with Flex Cache, giving the CPUs more control over the 16MB local cache.

I’m not going to put words in Qualcomm’s mouth — it simply hasn’t talked about the latest Oryon CPU to know for sure, and gave us some pretty marketing-heavy answers when asked. But based on the benchmarks, it looks like this year’s 10% performance gains come entirely from that 5GHz clock. Likewise, Qualcomm suggests a modest 14% improvement in AI number-crunching capabilities on its NPU, saving the bigger improvements for Extreme mode. So you could certainly argue that last year’s flagships will feel virtually the same in terms of everyday performance. The exception is gaming, which claims a 35% GPU performance gain for the regular Gen 6 over the Gen 5, but the lack of HPM might change this equation depending on the game.

Taken together, the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 6 is technically a faster upgrade over the Gen 5. However, it misses a few niche, high-end features that help set the best high-end phones apart from their last-gen and mid-range counterparts. If the Gen 6 does become a popular choice in sub-$1000 flagships, not only does the feature gap between standard and Pro Max/Ultra models look set to grow ever bigger in 2027, but we’ll have to seriously ask whether we might as well buy last year’s model at a discount.