Exynos 2600 could be better at gaming than the rival Snapdragon chip

It is widely reported that the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ will use Samsung’s Exynos 2600 chip in most countries globally. The Galaxy S26 Ultra, however, could feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor. Early indications suggest the Exynos 2600 may outperform the rival Snapdragon chip in ray tracing games.

The base Galaxy S26 with the Exynos 2600 processor recently appeared (via @BairroGrande) on Basemark’s In Vitro leaderboard for ray tracing performance. It secured the top position in the test, scoring 8,262 points.

The Honor Magic 8 Pro, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, scored 7,527 points. The Vivo X300 Pro, using the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chip, scored 7,057 points. Based on these figures, the Exynos 2600 could be roughly 9 to 10 percent faster than its Snapdragon rival and around 16 percent faster than its MediaTek rival.

Samsung announced the Exynos 2600 last month. It is the world’s first 2nm mobile chip, fabricated using Samsung Foundry’s 2nm GAA (SF2) process. It has a 10-core CPU that combines Arm’s latest C1 series cores. Its C1 Ultra prime core can reach clock speeds of up to 3.8GHz.

Its Xclipse 960 GPU is based on AMD’s RDNA architecture but is reportedly developed entirely in house by Samsung. The South Korean firm claims it delivers 50 percent better ray tracing performance than the Xclipse 950 GPU used in the Exynos 2500.

In recent years, Exynos chips have often offered better ray tracing performance than their Snapdragon counterparts. Even so, these early benchmark results should be taken with a pinch of salt. Real gaming performance and efficiency will only become clear after full reviews of the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ are published.