Alleged Geekbench test shows 3nm A17 Bionic topping 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy

Apple's A17 Bionic chipset, the first application processor (AP) used in a smartphone to be manufactured with a 3nm process node, was allegedly put through the Geekbench benchmark test for the first time according to X tipster @NaveenTechWala (via NotebookCheck). The SoC was supposedly powering an iPhone 15 Pro when it tallied a single-core score of 3269 and a multi-core score of 7666. That compares with the 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy's Geekbench scores of 2,223 and 6,661 for single-core and multi-core respectively.

The Qualcomm chip, still unannounced, was reportedly inside a Galaxy S24+ during its Geekbench test. The A17 Bionic scored 47% better on the single-core test and 15.1% higher on the multi-core test. The A17 Bionic will be powering the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max models while the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus will be driven by the 4nm A16 Bionic which currently is found inside the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.

A17 benchmark#iphone15#iphone15propic.twitter.com/b817WOjJtK

— Naveen Tech Wala (@NaveenTechWala) August 12, 2023

Compared to Geekbench scores for the A16 Bionic of 2531 (single-core) and 6460 (multi-core), the A17 Bionic scored 29% higher than its predecessor in the single-core test and 19% higher in the multi-core test. The A17 Bionic's maximum clock speed according to the X post was 3.7GHz which matches a previously rumored leak about the A17 Bionic's specs. 

The A17 Bionic also generated a Compute Benchmark Score of 30669 which is higher than the 23000 tallied by the iPhone 14 Pro running the A16 Bionic. This test measures the GPU performance by simulating how the GPU does with typical tasks such as image processing, computer vision, and machine learning. The higher score seems out of line with the addition of just one additional GPU core on the A17 Bionic, but the latter does have an advantage over the A16 Bionic thanks to the new 3nm process node.

The 4nm A16 Bionic carries 16 billion transistors and the smaller feature size inherent with the lower process node used to build the A17 Bionic means we should see smaller transistors used with the new chipset. That means that more of them will fit inside the chip making it more powerful and energy efficient.

Keep in mind however that @NaveenTechWala is a relatively unknown tipster and the lack of an actual Geekbench test result means that you should take these results with a grain of salt.