This year, Qualcomm confidently announced itself Snapdragon 8 Elite is the fastest mobile CPU in the world thanks to the integration of a customized Oryon CPU core inherited from the Snapdragon
Specifically, Qualcomm said the Snapdragon 8 Elite has a more powerful GPU and is up to 40% more power efficient than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
The new GPU even supports the first mobile Unreal Engine 5.3 with Nanite technology to create movie-quality 3D environments.
The CPU part of Snapdragon 8 Elite is also confirmed by Qualcomm to be 45% stronger, improving energy by 44% compared to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
I had the opportunity to directly experience the gaming performance of Snapdragon 8 Elite at the Snapdragon Summit 2024 event taking place in Hawaii and below are my initial impressions. We invite you to follow along.
First game: Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile
The first game that Qualcomm let me try was Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile. This is a Battle Royale-style survival action role-playing game like PUBG or Free Fire, but instead of using guns as the main weapon, we will use swords, bows and crossbows and transform into heroes in our lives. Chinese chivalry, heroic chivalry, wanderlust.
Naraka: Bladepoint has been available on PC, Xbox, Playstation since 2021 and has created a lot of buzz in the gaming community with eye-catching graphics, new swordplay gameplay, in-depth character customization, diverse costumes. As for the Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile version for phones, it is only available in China, and will soon be released globally.
The first impression when playing Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile on a phone running Snapdragon 8 Elite chip is that the graphics are quite impressive. The images appear very detailed and sharp. At first glance, you don’t think this is a mobile game, but you think it’s a PC game. Texture details (surface patterns), shadows, anti-aliasing, lighting, etc. all appear very eye-catching.
Character movements are also extremely smooth. The graphic effects during combat and fighting are very beautiful, exuding the magic of swordplay moves. The character is very flexible and can climb, fly, jump, and perform light attacks combined with many diverse combat moves.
An even more interesting point of Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile is that you will have an AI teammate with you and you can give voice commands to this AI teammate to request a series of actions such as: providing support during combat. , save money when you are in danger or seriously injured, find items in the game for you, or even be able to confide in conversations, ask to dance and sing just like with a teammate controlled by a real person. very interesting.
This helps bring a completely new game experience, instead of having to wander alone, now you always have a good friend standing by your side, ready to support anytime, anywhere.
However, this voice command and chat ability only supports Chinese because Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile is produced by Chinese gaming giant NetEase.
You can watch the video of me testing Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile on Snapdragon 8 Elite below to understand better.
Second game: GRID Legends: Deluxe Edition
The second game that Qualcomm let me test on a phone running Snapdragon 8 Elite is GRID Legends: Deluxe Edition. This is a very famous racing game on PC, Xbox, PlayStation with a very realistic driving simulation mechanism, even at the highest difficulty level, you must have experience driving a car to play.
Graphics by GRID Legends Also eye-catching, the car models are diverse, especially the huge car system from sports cars, muscle cars, Nascar or F1 cars are all there. Even if you want to race Formula E (electric racing cars) or perform Drift? GRID Legends also responds.
With version GRID Legends: Deluxe Edition On phones, it is currently in pre-registration form, and will not be widely released until December, and currently only Qualcomm test devices can play it because Qualcomm has cooperated specifically with the game developer to optimize the title. This game is for Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.
My impressive point continues to be the graphics. The graphics of the racing game are much more superior and eye-catching than the game Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile.
The images appear extremely detailed and sharp, especially the eye-catching shadow and lighting effects. In the game screen that I tested, the racetrack had just experienced a heavy rain. You could clearly see water streaks on the road surface reflecting light from street lights, car headlights, and even reflections. Photos of moving vehicles. The car models, racetrack scenes, and surrounding environment appear extremely vividly.
It must be said that the graphics are not inferior to the top racing games on PC today such as Need for Speed Unbound, Forza Horizon 5.
Without actual testing, I would probably suspect that this is a cloud gaming game, which means playing games like transmitting images over the network from a high-configuration computer to handle the processing. But no, this is completely a game running on your phone. The detailed graphics are very high but the game still runs smoothly, without any lag at all on a smartphone equipped with Snapdragon 8 Elite.
The phone I tested was also equipped with a specialized controller for playing games, so it was no different from a mobile gaming machine like Steam Deck, Rog Ally, Nintendo Switch, making the game testing experience even more attractive.
You can watch more videos of me testing GRID Legends: Deluxe Edition on Snapdragon 8 Elite below to see more clearly the impressive graphics.
Last game title: Dark And Darker Mobile
The last game I tested with Snapdragon 8 Elite was Dark And Darker Mobile. A role-playing, side-scrolling game set in a medieval dungeon with a style quite similar to Soulslike games like Elden Ring, Dark Souls when allowing to build items, customize characters, armor, and weapons very well. diversity.
Graphics continue to impress me. Recently, I tested quite a few gaming laptops and played AAA role-playing games like Black Myth: Wukong, God of War Ragnarök, Ghost of Tsushima… and I can see that the game Dark And Darker Mobile runs on this Snapdragon 8 Elite. disaster is not inferior at all.
The detail of the character models, details of the environment, objects, and backgrounds such as tree silhouettes and blades of grass appearing in the game are all very eye-catching, approaching those of PC and console games.
According to Qualcomm, the real-time hardware-accelerated Ray Tracing feature on Snapdragon 8 Elite brings lighting and shadow quality improved by more than 35%. Along with Snapdragon Game Super Resolution 2.0 technology, it provides higher quality upscaling and lower latency (1 m/s) for phone games, so gaming performance is also much better.
The Game Super Resolution 2.0 feature will be similar to the DLSS or FSR feature on NVIDIA or AMD graphics, which use AI to support rendering frames at low resolution and then automatically upgrade and interpolate to higher resolution. higher to help reduce the burden on the device, thereby increasing performance and frame count when playing games, helping the game run smoother.
What surprised me even more was that while running such heavy games, the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip on the devices I experienced was not hot or uncomfortable at all, just slightly warm. The test models are all Reference Design products, which means the test version was developed by Qualcomm and sent to phone companies or game companies to test new chips, not commercial versions.
Below is a video of me testing Dark And Darker Mobile on Snapdragon 8 Elite so you can more closely examine the graphic details.
Summary
After quickly experiencing the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip with 3 extremely heavy games with graphics approaching PC level, Qualcomm’s latest flagship chip really made me go from one surprise to another.
It’s hard to imagine mobile games with graphics developing so quickly and the small mobile phones now with Snapdragon 8 Elite will have extremely formidable power. Of course, we will need to add real commercial phone devices to companies in the near future. How will playing games for longer, longer periods of time, temperature, battery consumption? Whether it can be maintained at a good level or not will be something users are especially interested in.
And I will soon get a phone running Snapdragon 8 Elite to test more for you guys. Please visit GameHuz regularly to not miss the hottest news about the technology world!.
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