Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple’s A19 Pro: Table of Contents
The battle for smartphone chipset supremacy is fiercer than ever in 2025, with Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 going head-to-head against Apple’s A19 Pro. In this detailed comparison, we break down how these industry-leading processors stack up against each other in departments like fabrication, CPU, GPU, AI engines, benchmarks, and connectivity.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple’s A19 Pro: Fabrication Process
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is based on TSMC’s 3nm N3P technology. For those catching up, N3P is an optical shrink and performance-enhanced derivative of N3E, which provides additional performance and efficiency benefits.
At the same clock speed, N3P technology provides a four to five percent higher performance compared to N3E. The efficiency levels are also improved by five to 10% (at the same clock speeds).
Apple’s A19 Pro is also based on TSMC’s third-generation N3P fabrication technology, so there’s no fundamental difference between the 8 Elite Gen 5 and the A19 Pro’s manufacturing process.
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Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple’s A19 Pro: CPU
Qualcomm’s latest CPU comprises eight processing cores: two Oryon prime cores at up to 4.65 GHz and six Oryon performance cores at up to 3.63 GHz. With this combination, the CPU promises to offer up to 20% improvement in single-core and up to 17% improvement in multi-core performance. Compared to the 8 Elite, the 8 Elite Gen 5’s CPU is 35% more power efficient. The CPU supports up to LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage.
The A19 Pro, on the other hand, features a hexa-core CPU. It consists of two prime cores clocked at 4.26 GHz and four performance cores clocked at 2.6 GHz (both of which are lower clock speeds than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5). A key difference here is that Qualcomm is using Oryon Prime cores for higher burst speeds, while Apple focuses on optimized custom cores scaling up to 4.26 GHz.
Reports also suggest that Apple’s chipset features larger core-level and system-level caches, which benefit memory-intensive tasks. Like the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the A19 Pro supports LPDDR5X RAM, but instead of UFS storage, Apple equips its iPhones with NVMe storage.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple’s A19 Pro: GPU
Besides the capable CPU, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 features the new Adreno 840 GPU (1.2 GHz) with a new sliced architecture that improves gaming performance by up to 23% while simultaneously increasing efficiency by up to 20%.
Qualcomm has also equipped the GPU with something called “High Performance Memory (HPM)” for reduced latency. Hardware-based ray tracing has also been improved by up to 25% over the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The GPU also supports Unreal Engine 5 and Mesh Shading, features that enable high-quality console-level gaming entirely on the device.
Apple’s A19 Pro, on the other hand, houses a 1.6 GHz hexa-core GPU, offering over 30% improvement in sustained graphics performance compared to the A18 Pro (I’m talking about real-world AAA gaming). However, Apple doesn’t specify how much more efficient the GPU is.
Key improvements to the GPU include enhanced full-scene ray tracing, dedicated Neural Accelerators built into each GPU core for improved graphics performance, support for MetalFX upscaling, and hardware mesh shading. While the A19 Pro seems to have a higher GPU clock speed, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 reportedly features higher shading units and delivers higher computational power (between 2.8 and 3.2 FLOPS).
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In simple terms, both GPUs provide top-class gaming performance, which is more than enough to run a video game at its maximum graphics and frame rate settings for an extended period. How Android smartphone makers and Apple implement this is a different story, though.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple’s A19 Pro: NPU
With the Snapdragon chipset, you get the next-generation Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, which claims to offer 37% faster AI performance that enables personalized agentic AI assistants that understand multimodal inputs. The company also claims a 16% better performance per watt, which is another way of saying that the NPU is more efficient than the last generation. Other features include improved generative AI performance and better context awareness.
The A19 Pro, on the other hand, features a 16-core Neural Engine which offers up to two times faster on-device LLM execution than the A18 Pro, with support for multimodal inputs and context-persistent for AI. More than the NPU itself, it is the way that Apple integrates it across iOS for voice, camera, text prediction, photo editing, and AR/VR workloads. An aspect where the Snapdragon Hexagon NPU has a clear advantage is support for more third-party frameworks.
Apple could defend its relatively closed framework by stating that it’s more privacy-centric, but that still gives an edge to Qualcomm. Though the companies haven’t confirmed the numbers, reports suggest that the Hexagon NPU offers more processing power.
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Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple’s A19 Pro: Benchmarks
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, on a Qualcomm reference device, scores upwards of 3,830 points in the single-core and 12,208 points in the multi-core Geekbench 6 CPU test. The results sure are impressive, but keep in mind that reference devices are designed to excel in benchmarks; consumer-centric smartphones manufactured by brands do not exactly mirror the level of performance they offer.
In comparison, the iPhone 17 Pro Max scores around 3,870 points in the single-core and around 9,960 points in the multi-core GeekBench 6 CPU test. Despite being superior in the single-core test, the A19 Pro lags behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s multi-core score (and by a good 22% no less). Again, these are synthetic benchmarks that give us an idea about a phone’s peak performance.
However, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 outperforms the A19 Pro in terms of multi-core score. A similar result is also prevalent in other benchmarks, such as 3DMark Solar Bay, 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited, and 3DMark Steel Noman Light Unlimited.
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Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple’s A19 Pro: Connectivity
Qualcomm’s 2025 flagship mobile platform relies on the Snapdragon X85 5G modem (with fourth-generation Qualcomm 5G AI), which provides up to 12.5 Gbps downlink and up to 3.7 Gbps uplink speeds, with up to 30% faster AI inferencing. Furthermore, the modem features FastConnect 7900, which improves power savings by 40% and reduces gaming latency by 50%. And yes, the modem supports Wi-Fi 7, wherein it provides a peak download speed of 5.8 Gbps.
Meanwhile, the A19 Pro on the iPhone 17 Pro models also utilizes a Qualcomm modem, specifically the Snapdragon X80 5G, which provides speeds of up to 10 Gbps downlink and up to 3.5 Gbps uplink. Clearly, Qualcomm has reserved its best chips for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Apple’s A19 Pro: Conclusion
Both the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Apple’s A19 Pro are the absolute pinnacle of mobile silicon technology in 2025, but they have a different approach toward performance and efficiency. Qualcomm leans heavily into raw multi-core power and advanced GPU capabilities, while the A19 Pro continues to excel in single-core performance and GPU optimizations for sustained gaming.
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