Snapdragon-powered Galaxy S26 Ultra smashes Exynos-powered S26 in single-core performance

The Samsung Galaxy S26 series will be unveiled on Wednesday next week (February 25). In case you missed them, here are our articles covering all the leaked info for the Galaxy S26 Ultra as well as the Galaxy S26 and S26+.

Either way, you must have heard by now – the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in all regions, while the Galaxy S26 and S26+ will use the Exynos 2600 in several regions (the exact regions are not 100% clear at this point). Here’s a preview of what to expect from those chips, thanks to TechManiacs who have gathered system info and benchmark results from the upcoming phones.

Chipset info: Galaxy S26/S26+ with Exynos 2600 • Galaxy S26 Ultra with SD 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy

First, we have to note that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will be an overclocked “for Galaxy” variant – its Prime core cluster is clocked at 4.74GHz instead of the usual 4.61GHz for the regular Elite Gen 5. This might be paired with a GPU boost too, but we don’t know that for certain yet.

This means that the Prime cores (Oryon V3) on the Snapdragon are clocked almost a full gigahertz higher than the ARM C1-Ultra core of the Exynos 2600 (which runs at 3.80GHz). So, it’s no surprise that the Snapdragon chip has a lead in single-core performance (+16%).

However, the multi-core score is effectively identical as it is within the margin of error (the Exynos 2600 score is 2% lower than the Snapdragon one). Of course, it helps that the Exynos 2600 has a deca-core CPU (1+3+6), while the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy has “only” eight cores (2+6).

Geekbench 6.6.0 results: Galaxy S26/S26+ (Exynos 2600) • Galaxy S26 Ultra (SD 8 Gen 5 Elite for Galaxy)

It’s not listed in the screenshots above, but all three Galaxy S26 models have 12GB of RAM as a base. The S26 Ultra should have a 16GB option, but that’s only for the 1TB variant and we don’t think that one was the one being tested.

For more on the S26 trio, check out our “what to expect” posts.

Source (in Greek)