Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite has shown impressive performance running AAA games via emulation, achieving 60FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at low settings and exceeding the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's performance in A Plague Tale: Innocence. However, new footage reveals the chipset struggles with Ghost of Tsushima, a game originally designed for the less powerful PS4. The reason? The Snapdragon 8 Elite lacks AVX and F16C instruction set support.
AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions) and F16C are x86 instruction sets that enhance performance in compatible software. AVX allows for more complex calculations, while F16C optimizes floating-point conversions, improving physics and graphics rendering. Their absence in the Snapdragon 8 Elite explains the poor performance seen in a Bilibili video , where Ghost of Tsushima fails to reach 30FPS.
Interestingly, the Snapdragon 8 Elite can run the visually more demanding Cyberpunk 2077 at higher frame rates. This is because Cyberpunk 2077's AVX requirement was removed post-launch.
While the Snapdragon 8 Elite's ability to run AAA games at all is a significant achievement, this revelation highlights a potential weakness. The upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2, with its added SME (Scalable Matrix Extension) support, may address these performance limitations.
