New Delhi: Google’s new Tensor G6 just showed up in the Pixel 11 phones, and people obviously want to know how it does against Qualcomm’s chips. Several sources have already tested it against the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 a couple weeks ago, and Snapdragon won that one by a lot. So this time they tried it against the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite. Same story, pretty much.
Let’s look at the numbers first, because they’re much clear for the users to understand about the comparison. On Geekbench 6, the Tensor G6 (in the Pixel 11 Pro XL) got 2,671 points on single-core and 6,802 on multi-core. The Snapdragon 8 Elite, in the Galaxy S25 Plus, got 3,008 and 9,730. The single-core gap, 12%, isn’t that big. But the multi-core gap is huge, 43% behind. That’s the kind of difference you’d actually feel when running lots of apps or doing heavy tasks.
AnTuTu shows the same thing, just even more clearly. Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite has scored 3.16 million total, Tensor scored 1.86 million, over 70% higher. The breakdown is the interesting part though. CPU was “only” 22% better on Snapdragon, but GPU was 177% higher. That’s not a mistake, really that big. Memory and general performance (UX) scores were also clearly better on Snapdragon. Then the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test backed all this up too. Snapdragon scored 6,612 against Tensor’s 3,386, almost double, and the frame rate was almost double too (39.48 fps vs 20.31 fps).
So if you care about raw power, or want your phone to keep up performance during long gaming sessions, Snapdragon 8 Elite is clearly the better choice. Not much to argue there.
But here’s the thing people often miss: that’s not really what Tensor chips are trying to do. Google used a strange 7-core setup this time (usually it’s 8), built with newer ARM C1-Ultra and C1-Pro cores, to make room for a much bigger fifth-gen TPU. That TPU is what powers the upgraded Gemini Nano features on the phone, things like Magic Eraser, live translation, and all the camera-processing tricks Pixels are known for. So it’s a trade-off. Google gave up some raw CPU and GPU power to get better on-device AI and better power efficiency on the 3nm chip.
One tiny victory for Google’s Tensor G6 it beats Snapdragon on peak 5G speed (12 Gbps vs 10 Gbps), though that probably won’t matter much in everyday usage.
So in short: if gaming and top performance matter most to you, go with Snapdragon 8 Elite. If you care more about Google’s AI features and camera processing, Tensor G6 still makes sense. They’re just built for different things, and the benchmarks make that pretty obvious.
