A less powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip is now officially a thing

Aug 4, 2026 — 8:13 AM ET

• A prominent leaker has revealed key details about the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5V chipset that will debut on the Redmi K100 Pro in China next week.
• The cost-effective chipset will reportedly offer CPU performance on par with other 8 Elite Gen 5 versions, but with a slightly underpowered GPU.
• Given the rising component costs, this cost-effective Qualcomm chip may be the preferred choice for phone makers.

The global RAM crisis has already forced smartphone manufacturers to bump up prices, and there are no signs of the trend abating anytime soon. In the meantime, we’ve learned that chipmaker Qualcomm is developing a cost-effective version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Well, the first phone featuring this SoC is about to launch in China next week, and we’re gaining some early insight into its performance.

Popular leaker Digital Chat Station shared some insights about the unreleased phone and its chipset on Weibo. For starters, this chip, known as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5V (SM8850-1-AB), appears to be built using the same TSMC N3P manufacturing process as other 8 Elite Gen 5 models. It also retains high-performance 4.6GHz Oryon CPU cores.

These attributes mean the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5V will retain the raw CPU performance of its more expensive siblings. There are some changes in the graphics department, though, with the source noting that the Adreno 840 GPU included here is slightly underpowered.

More specifically, the new chip offers the same sliced architecture as previous Elite chips, but appears to have only two slices. Furthermore, the GPU is said to have 12MB of dedicated graphics memory. By contrast, the full-blown Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 GPU has three slices and 18MB of dedicated graphics memory, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 GPU has two slices and no dedicated graphics memory.

Despite this apparent disadvantage, Digital Chat Station claims that games such as Honor of Kings, Delta Force, and Peacekeeper Elite maintained consistent frame rates. Meanwhile, titles like Genshin Impact reportedly experienced dips in frame rate during graphics-intensive activities.

Separately, Redmi has shared benchmark scores for the new chipset and has previously revealed part of the K100 Pro’s hardware in teasers ahead of the August 11 launch. This is also how we know the upcoming smartphone will feature a 6.59-inch AMOLED screen with an impressive 185Hz refresh rate. There’s also mention of a larger battery on the Redmi K100 Pro, though specific details haven’t been revealed just yet.

While we don’t foresee this Redmi smartphone making its way to the US anytime soon, it signals an upcoming trend among phone makers as they try to cut costs. Consequently, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5V may continue to thrive even after Qualcomm releases the next generation of its high-end mobile SoCs, which could have steep prices.