Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra recently made its single-core and multi-core run on Geekbench 6, and just like its predecessors, the flagship features an overclocked version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC. This time, it was the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, whose performance cores were running at 4.74GHz instead of the default 4.61GHz. Despite this small frequency bump, our single-core and multi-core results are shown to be higher, which obviously makes us question a few things, starting with whether there’s any advantage to Samsung shipping its premium devices with a slightly faster chipset.
An active cooling solution coupled with the diminishing returns of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 running at higher clock speeds could be why the Galaxy S26 Ultra was slower than our flagship
Two advantages our REDMAGIC 11 Pro had were liquid cooling and a fan, which might have provided just enough push to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to overtake the overclocked version running in the Galaxy S26 Ultra. You can check out the scores below, and those planning on getting Samsung’s top-end offering will be disappointed to learn that our Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 was the victor in the single-core test results too.
- Galaxy S26 Ultra - Single-core score: 3,601 / multi-core score: 10,686
- REDMAGIC 11 Pro - Single-core score: 3,696 (2.6 percent faster) / multi-core score: 11,654 (9.1 percent faster)
Historically, Samsung’s flagships with overclocked Snapdragon chipsets have always been slower than the competition, which makes us wonder if the Korean giant is actually maintaining this strategy as a pure marketing play or if it has a genuine reason to provide its customers with the best hardware possible in a smartphone.
Obviously, the results suggest the latter, but it is also important to note that there’s only so much tweaking Samsung can do with the overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, especially when it wasn’t the one who designed the SoC. With the Exynos 2600, it’s another story, but given Samsung’s first 2nm GAA chipset relies on ARM’s CPU and GPU designs, Qualcomm’s Oryon architecture would fare better, at least for now.
It is important to remember that Geekbench 6 isn’t the only benchmark around, and we’ll have plenty of time to showcase additional comparisons. It is also possible that the Galaxy S26 Ultra performs better once the first retail units have launched after Galaxy Unpacked, so let us keep our fingers crossed for more updates.
News Source: Geekbench 6
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
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