Pixel 9 has a much slower chip than Galaxy S24

Earlier this month, Google launched its latest non-foldable flagship smartphones, Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and Pixel 9 Pro XL, featuring the company’s new Tensor G4 chipset. These phones go head-on with Samsung’s Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and Galaxy S24 Ultra, which feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy and Exynos 2400 chipsets. Now, the SoC performance benchmarks of Google’s latest flagship phones are out, which tell us how they compete with Samsung's latest flagship devices.

CPU

In GeekBench 6, the Pixel 9 Pro XL scored 1,950 points in the single-core CPU test and 4,655 points in the multi-core CPU test. In comparison, the Galaxy S24 Ultra with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy SoC scored 2,148 points in the former and 6,710 points in the latter. Whereas, the Galaxy S24+ with the Exynos 2400 chipset scored 2,067 points in the single-core test and 6,599 points in the multi-core test.

That means the Pixel 9 Pro XL is 10% slower in the single-core CPU test and 36% slower in the multi-core CPU test compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

For your reference, the Pixel 9's Tensor G4 1x 3.1GHz Cortex-X4 core, 3x 2.6 GHz Cortex-A720 cores, and 4x 1.92 GHz Cortex-A520 cores.

Whereas, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has 1x 3.39GHz Cortex-X4 cores, 3x 3.1GHz Cortex-A720 cores, 2x 2.9GHz Cortex-A720 cores, and 2x 2.2GHz Cortex-A520 cores.

The Exynos 2400 has 1x 3.2GHz Cortex-X4 cores, 2x 2.9GHz Cortex-A720 cores, 3x 2.6GHz Cortex-A720 cores, and 4x 1.95GHz Cortex-A520 cores.

GPU

In Genshin Impact, the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL scored 39.2 frames per second (fps). In comparison, the Galaxy S24 Ultra scored 51 fps. That means the one from Samsung has a 30% better GPU performance than the one from Google.

For your reference, the Pixel 9's Tensor G4 features the Mali-G715 MC7 GPU. Whereas, Galaxy S24's Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy features Adreno 750 GPU, and its Exynos 2400 features Xclipse 940 GPU.

Samsung comes out on top

All-in-all, the Google Pixel 9 series smartphones with their Tensor G4 chipset are way behind the Galaxy S24 series in terms of CPU and GPU performance with their Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy and Exynos 2400 SoCs. The irony is that the Tensor G4 is based on the Exynos 2400 chipset (although it has a vastly different CPU and GPU configuration) and made by Samsung.

So, if you are confused between the Pixel 9 series and the Galaxy S24 lineup and your main focus is on performance, it is a no-brainer to go with the ones from Samsung. Google’s upcoming Tensor G5, which the company will use for the Pixel 10, will be made by TSMC. It would be interesting to see if that changes things around for Google.