Samsung’s 2nm GAA Efficiency Called Into Question As Exynos 2600 Consumes 30W In Peak Power Running Geekbench 6, 40% More Than Snapdragon 8 Elite

The Exynos 2600 is Samsung’s first 2nm GAA chipset, with the advanced lithography promising better performance and efficiency over the company’s older manufacturing processes. However, those claims are busted in the latest benchmark comparison, where the chipset ends up reaching 30W of peak power draw, making it equivalent to what some notebooks consume. It is also disappointing to see that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is significantly more efficient than its rival, proving that TSMC’s foundry is ahead of its rivals.

A Decompression Test shows the Exynos 2600 requiring 63 percent more power while completing the task slightly longer than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

A gauntlet of tests was performed on the base Galaxy S26, OnePlus 15, and the Motorola Signature by the YouTube channel TechStation365, each fitted with a different chipset, with the Exynos 2600 being a part of the mix. While we will discuss the other results at a later time, let us turn our attention to two benchmarks, Geekbench 6 and a Decompression Test involving a 20GB zip file. Despite the Exynos 2600 keeping up with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, its peak power draw of 30W was highly concerning, showing that Samsung’s 2nm GAA process still needs refinement.

While the aforementioned power draw may have been for just a couple of seconds, it highlights how the Galaxy S26 would perform rather poorly in sustained workloads because of the Exynos 2600’s increased power draw. Currently, we don’t have any explanation as to why the SoC would reach 30W in Geekbench 6, especially when the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which has also been criticized for reaching higher power levels, was sitting comfortably at 21W.

It may have to do with the increased number of CPU cores, which help to deliver better multi-core performance, but at the cost of higher power draw, or maybe because Geekbench 6 has been coded to force SoCs to reach their maximum frequencies.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

• Single-core - 3,641 points
• Multi-core - 10,902 points
• Peak power draw - 21.48W

Exynos 2600

• Single-core - 3,271 points (Exynos 2600 is 10.16 percent slower than Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5)
• Multi-core - 10,745 points (Exynos 2600 is 1.14 percent slower than Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5)
• Peak power draw - 30.22W (Exynos 2600 consumes 40.69 percent more power than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5)

Snapdragon 8 Gen 5

• Single-core - 2,904 points
• Multi-core - 9,443 points
• Peak power draw: 21.89W

Even in the Decompression Test, the Exynos 2600 saw no efficiency improvements, reaching up to 13W in peak power consumption, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 ‘chilling’ at under 5W. After firing up multiple runs and coming up with the average results, TechStation365 has concluded that the Exynos 2600 is ‘power starved’ as those 10 cores require a little more juice to perform optimally.

You can check out the entire video by clicking the source link below, but these results pretty much confirm the cracks in Exynos 2600’s armor and show that Samsung’s lithography remains two steps behind TSMC’s. Perhaps the Exynos 2700 will deliver a better display of both performance and efficiency.

News Source: TechStation365

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