Following in what seems to be a downgrade to Qualcomm’s earlier reveal with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the chip manufacturer has announced the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3—its latest chipset aimed at higher-mid tier devices.
The naming convention might imply that the SD 7 Gen 3 is a successor to either the SD 7+ Gen 2 or SD 7s Gen 2. But rather than surpassing both in terms of hardware capability, the new chipset sits in between the two.
While similar to the SD 7+ Gen 2 for being made using TSMC’s 4nm processor, the SD 7 Gen 3 has a lower-end, eight-core CPU. One of the cores within the Cortex-A715 CPU is clocked at 2.63 GHz while the rest run at 2.4 GHz. Meanwhile, all cores within the Cortex-A510 CPU are clocked at 1.8 GHz.
Matching the CPU’s fast real-time processing, the SD 7 Gen 3 supports LPDDR5 DRAM at 3.2 GHz.
The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, however, is not a follow-up to the SN 7+ Gen 2. This is most ostensive in how it lacks a prime CPU core, like the Cortex-X2, as seen in the latter. Instead, it succeeds the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, which released last year. Meanwhile, the SD 7 Gen 3 is said to be 15 percent faster than the SD 7 Gen 1.
Not only is the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 faster than the CPU it technically succeeds in the CPU department, but its built-in GPU, the Adreno 720, is technically superior to the Adreno 710 by 50 percent, too. This enhanced capability allows the GPU to run QHD+ screens at up to 120Hz or full HD+ screens at a 168Hz refresh rate. But when used with an external screen such as 4K, it can run at a 60Hz refresh rate.