The absence of native AAA games on Android is rather disappointing because the Snapdragon 8 Elite is an excellent example of how the hardware is more than ready to bring a quality experience to smaller devices, and it is just a matter of convincing developers to make the required effort. After all, running Cyberpunk 2077, even on the low settings, is no small feat, and a new video shows that a stable 60FPS can be achieved when running the visually incredible title.
Cyberpunk 2077 managed 60FPS as the Snapdragon 8 Elite device was running the game at 720p; smaller screens will not impact details greatly
A gameplay video that is just over a minute long was shared by @cozy_OSS, revealing that Cyberpunk 2077 can maintain a 60FPS framerate with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The framerate counter is visible, and what is impressive about this performance run is that there are no dropped frames, and the gameplay footage shows a combat sequence, which is typically more taxing on the hardware. Then again, the Snapdragon 8 Elite was previously shown to be faster than the AMD Radeon 780M running in the ASUS ROG Ally in 3DMark Steel Nomad Light, so we would expect the chipset to deliver some notable performance in Cyberpunk 2077.
However, to achieve a 60FPS framerate target, the visual settings preset had to be set to low, with the resolution being 1,280 x 720. While some might argue that the rendered resolution is on the lower side, smaller screens will typically not display the same visual quality degradation because the pixels are spaced very closely with one another, so noticing those differences should be difficult if you do not possess an eagle eye. As for how Cyberpunk 2077 managed to run successfully on the Snapdragon 8 Elite without a native Android app, it is thanks to emulation software called GameFusion.
Cyberpunk 2077 locked at 60fps (720p / Low settings) on the snapdragon 8 Elite. pic.twitter.com/aKVgZOhozu
— LetCook (@cozy_OSS) November 17, 2024
The same program helped the Snapdragon 8 Elite run A Plague Tale: Innocence, with the chipset obtaining more than double the framerate of its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. If you watch the footage a few times, you will notice that Cyberpunk 2077, running on the Snapdragon 8 Elite, does not have ray tracing enabled for obvious reasons. For running the ‘eye candy’ path tracing, CD Projekt RED and NVIDIA recommend an RTX 4000 series GPU. Sure, the Snapdragon 8 Elite supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing, but there are countless examples that show a huge performance drop when enabling these features.
Regardless, running an AAA game on a smartphone would never have been possible a few years ago, which means that CD Projekt RED developers and others should get serious about bringing their games to the Snapdragon 8 Elite platform.
News Source: LetCook
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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