Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with quite a bit of emphasis on its raytracing capabilities, which we wrote should shoo in a new generation of mobile games graphics. However it seems that Samsung’s last-gen Exynos 2200 chipset is actually faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 when it comes to raytracing.
RDNA 2-powered Exynos 2200 is faster than Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in raytracing
Tests performed by Android Authority testing revealed that the Exynos 2200 delivered a better average FPS, despite the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 pulling ahead in terms of max FPS. This is due to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also presenting a lower minimum FPS. In another interesting twist, the Exynos 2200 which was infamous for doing poorly in extended tests, actually maintains its raytracing performance lead over a 20-run stress test. Or at least, until the 18th run. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 was more consistent, but being consistently lower is not what you want either.
Android Authority tested the Galaxy S22 Ultra (Exynos 2200) versus the Redmagic Pro 8 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2) with Basemark’s In Vitro raytracing benchmark. Unlike PC games which can take advantage of raytracing for shadows, lighting and reflections now, the benchmark only uses raytraced reflections combined with rasterized lighting and shadows. This is a relatively good look at how mobile game developers will take advantage of the raytracing chops of mobile chips, as fully raytraced graphics will probably be out of reach for mobile chipsets, at least for a few more years.
In traditional rasterized graphics or CPU workloads, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is obviously the clear victor. However this is also a very interesting peek at the work that Samsung and AMD have put in to give us the Xclipse 920 GPU. I do believe that Samsung’s inferior manufacturing process may have handicapped them a fair bit. However, as Samsung and AMD work closer on next-gen solutions, with next-gen process nodes, who knows. We may see Exynos may make a huge comeback. It won’t be anytime soon though. Samsung is not expected to announce a successor to the Exynos 2200 this year. The Samsung Galaxy S23 series is slated to exclusively feature the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Bummer.