Exynos 2400 scores high on benchmark; chip is ready to take on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3

The Samsung Exynos 2400 application processor (AP) is shaping up as a powerhouse. Rumored specs call for the SoC to feature a deca-core configuration that would include a high-performance Cortex-X4, two Cortex-A720 Performance cores running at a high clock speed, three more Cortex-A720 Performance cores running at a lower clock speed, and four Cortex-A520 Efficiency cores.

Samsung reportedly wanted to build a powerful flagship chip that can compete with Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset so that it can replace the Snapdragon APs used to power the Galaxy S23 line with the Exynos 2400 SoC on next year's Galaxy S24 flagship series. Doing this would allow Samsung to return to its previous practice of equipping all of its Galaxy S phones outside of North America and China with its Exynos silicon.

Sourcing the Exynos chips in-house would obviously save Samsung some big bucks, especially considering Qualcomm's "no license, no chips" policy. And Samsung is supposedly planning to use this found money to increase the storage on the basic Galaxy S24 to 256GB, matching the other models. And the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ are rumored to be equipped with 12GB of RAM, up from 8GB on this year's models. And the Galaxy S24 Ultra should see RAM hiked to 16GB from 8GB on the 256GB version, 12GB on the 512GB model.

But unless Samsung can build a powerful Exynos chip, this strategy cannot be employed. But it does appear from a tweet posted by @OreXda that the Exynos 2400 has met Samsung's objectives. A Geekbench 5 run-through resulted in a single-core score of 1711 and a multi-core score of 6967. The average scores were 1530 and 6210 for single-core and multi-core respectively.

Since the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 hasn't even been announced yet, the best we can do is compare the scores to Qualcomm's current top-of-the-line AP, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The Exynos 2400 is 31% faster than the Qualcomm chip which had a Geekbench result of 1604 (single-core) and 5311 (multi-core). The Apple A16 Bionic registered a single-core tally of 1871 topping the Exynos 2400, but trailed with a multi-core score of 5344.

One data point that we don't know is how hot the Exynos 2400 chipset got. But we do know that the SoC is being built on Samsung Foundry's enhanced 4nm LPP+ process node which should help with performance and efficiency improvements.

Before we get carried away, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is really the chipset that the Exynos 2400 needs to square off against to see whether Samsung can save some money and improve the specs of the Galaxy S24 series. A comparison against Apple's upcoming A17 Bionic is for bragging rights only and considering that the latter will be whipped up by TSMC using its 3nm process node, the comparison to the Exynos 2400 won't be as favorable for Samsung as the one with the A16 Bionic.