Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs Exynos 2400 Galaxy S24 test: which one is best?

Samsung’s Exynos chipset is back in the Galaxy S24 series, leaving us once again with a high-end flagship series with significant hardware differences depending on where you live. In summary, all Galaxy S24 Ultra owners and his S24 and S24 Plus customers in the US, Canada, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong will receive his Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset. Customers who purchase a Galaxy S24 or S24 Plus in Europe, the UK, India, and other regions will receive Exynos 2400 for Galaxy.

We’ve already covered the low-level Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Exynos 2400 specs. Today we’ll take a closer look at the test results to find out what, if any, differences you’ll find when using these phones. To make the test completely fair, we got both his Exynos and Snapdragon versions of the regular Galaxy S24, ensuring consistent battery capacity, display specs, and other hardware for side-by-side comparisons.

Snapdragon has the best performance

Looking at a series of benchmarks, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 model outperforms the Exynos Galaxy S24 in every test. The profit margins are not large. The difference between the two is only 7% in Geekbench 6 and 5% in PCMark. Because smartphones have similar CPU and memory capabilities, you will hardly notice any difference in performance between everyday and heavy-duty workloads. Perhaps the most interesting result is that Exynos’ 10-core configuration is outmatched by his Snapdragon’s larger 8-core CPU design.

However, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was the bigger winner in a series of 3DMark graphics tests, beating the Exynos 2400 by 25% in Wild Life and 18% in the more demanding Wild Life Extreme. The exception is Solar Bay, which uses ray tracing. Here the two models score almost the same, suggesting a ray tracing bottleneck in the Adreno architecture. Samsung’s use of AMD’s RDNA 3 Xclipse architecture comes into play here.

Turning to the stress tests, it’s clear that the compact Galaxy S24 form factor’s limited cooling capacity won’t allow these GPUs to run at full tilt for long. Both throttle back around the same time, but the Snapdragon model is the furthest away from its peak potential. The respective tests drop to only 47.9%, 54.2%, and 43.6% of peak performance. Exynos drops to 54.9%, 56.5%, and 60.3% after his 20 runs. That said, the 8 Gen 3 outperforms his Exynos chip at standard rasterization. The exception is ray tracing, where heat buildup favors AMD architecture.

Interestingly, the Exynos chip shows slightly higher temperatures in all three of these tests. Under stress, it’s about 2 degrees warmer on average than a Snapdragon smartphone. Thankfully, neither phone breaks the dreaded 50C mark.

Exynos improves battery life

While Snapdragon has the edge in performance, our tests suggest that Exynos Galaxy S24 customers will enjoy better battery life than their Snapdragon counterparts. This also applies to comparisons of previous generation chipsets, such as Snapdragon 865 vs. Exynos 990 and Snapdragon 888 vs. Exynos 2100.

The Exynos was not a clear winner in every battery life test. Camera capture times were about the same for both models, with his Snapdragon version lasting 16% longer at 4K30 video capture.

However, the Exynos Galaxy S24 achieved 17% longer 4K video playback and gaming benchmark times, and a 14% lead in the Zoom call test. The biggest win, however, is a 36% increase in battery life in automated web browsing tests. When it comes to the tasks you’re likely to perform most frequently throughout the day, the Exynos Galaxy S24 seems to last considerably longer.

Why is this? There are several possibilities. First, the Exynos 2400 adds two smaller CPU cores, and all 10 cores have lower clock speeds. Using a lower-clock CPU for light workloads such as web browsing uses less power because background work is distributed to lower-power cores. Similarly, Samsung Foundry’s 3rd generation 4nm (LPP+) manufacturing process could be as efficient as or slightly more efficient than the TSMC 4nm process used in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

This can also be a factor in the longer video playback times seen on Exynos models. It’s possible that Samsung’s video decoder is more efficient, but we’re just speculating here.

Of course, this test suite is not an exhaustive list of possible use cases, so your actual use cases will vary. Modem capabilities and associated power consumption when roaming between towers will affect these results, but are beyond the scope of what we can test. Similarly, background tasks and other options drain your battery, so this test is more of a rough guide than an absolute battery life prediction. Still, the Exynos 2400 appears to be more frugal in most tests and has shown better battery life compared to his Snapdragon models for customers around the world.

Looking at this year’s Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus models, the regional trade-off is a slight increase in gaming performance for Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 customers, especially when it comes to non-raytraced titles. However, Exynos users can expect longer battery life for many common workloads. Your preferences and priorities here will vary (I’d go for longer battery life).

As it turns out, there’s not much you can do about this. It’s a lottery as to whether his Exynos or Snapdragon versions of the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus ship in your region, and the hassle of importing a different model is hardly advisable. At the end of the day, the core experience of the Samsung Galaxy S24 is the same no matter what processor your phone has.