Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V-Series gaming performance, Digi Mart USA News: Notebookcheck has published gaming tests comparing the Poco F9 Pro, which uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V-Series, with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, which uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. According to the publisher, Qualcomm uses the same CPU and AI architecture in both the V-Series and regular flagship chipset, but the V-Series scales back the GPU, with the Adreno 840 featuring two GPU slices instead of three.
In PUBG Mobile, the two phones performed almost identically at the Smooth and HD presets. With Smooth, the Poco F9 Pro averaged 116.7 fps and the Galaxy S26 Ultra averaged 118.4 fps, a difference of 1.4%.
At HD, the averages were 88 fps and 89.1 fps respectively.
A significant gap appeared at the Ultra HD preset. The Galaxy S26 Ultra averaged 59.7 fps, effectively holding the 60 fps limit, while the Poco F9 Pro averaged 39.9 fps, a deficit of around 33%.
The publisher noted that the Poco’s frame rates remained largely stable.
In Genshin Impact with the highest graphics settings and 120 fps mode enabled, the gap disappeared. The Poco F9 Pro averaged 59.8 fps and the Galaxy S26 Ultra averaged 59.5 fps, with both phones appearing to be limited to 60 fps.
The publisher concludes that having one-third fewer GPU slices does not automatically mean one-third less gaming performance. Where frame rate limits apply, the GPU difference makes little visible difference, but under heavier graphics workloads the gap becomes substantial.
The publisher also notes that the higher clock speeds of the Galaxy variant may contribute to these results.
