Leaked Exynos 2600 GPU benchmark hints at minor performance lead over Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 – NotebookCheck.net News
ⓘ Samsung, edited
The Exynos 2600’s Xclipse 960 GPU has been benchmarked on Basemark’s In Vitro test. It shows up alongside the base Galaxy S26 and manages to outperform the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s Adreno 840 GPU by a narrow margin.
With the Galaxy S26 series set to launch in the coming weeks, more information about the Exynos 2600 SoC powering at least two of the three phones has surfaced online. A previous Geekbench listing stated the chip could trade blows with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in GPU performance. Now, we get to see the Exynos 2600’s Xclipse 960 GPU in action again, but in a lesser-known benchmark.
Basemark’s In Vitro benchmark measures the ray tracing performance of mobile GPUs. Here, the base Galaxy S26 scores 8,262 points, as confirmed by its model number (SM-S942B). The listing confirms it is on the S5E9965 board with an Xclipse 960 GPU. Interestingly, the only device that outperforms the Galaxy S26 is another Exynos 2600, but it is mounted on a test board instead of a production-ready smartphone. Unfortunately, the listing does not reveal any specifications, but previous Geekbench results confirm it will come with 4 WGP/8 CUs.
Performance-wise, the Xclipse 960 is about 10% faster than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s Adreno 840 GPU. That said, the Powerboard benchmark suite has historically favoured Exynos GPUs over Snapdragon, so the real-world performance delta between the two might be lower. As for the GPU architecture, one report says the Xcipse 960 was developed in-house by Samsung, while another suggests it uses AMD’s RDNA 4 IP.
An older Geekbench listing implied the Exynos 2600 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 would have similar CPU performance. If it carries over to the end product, all the Xclipse 960 needs to do is keep up in the GPU department. This will help assuage some concerns about Exynos chips, which, in recent years, have been unable to keep up with similarly specced alternatives from Qualcomm and MediaTek.
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Anil Ganti – Senior Tech Writer – 2830 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2019
I’ve been an avid PC gamer since the age of 8. My passion for gaming eventually pushed me towards general tech, and I got my first writing gig at the age of 19. I have a degree in mechanical engineering and have worked in the manufacturing industry and a few other publications like Wccftech before joining Notebookcheck in November 2019. I cover a variety of topics including smartphones, gaming, and computer hardware.
Anil Ganti, 2026-02- 5 (Update: 2026-02- 5)
