The Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra is rumored to get the same higher-performing version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 as the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but somehow, the latest benchmark leak shows Samsung’s flagship tablet to be faster than the smartphone. Here we discuss why that is.
Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra’s higher performing scores may have to do with its larger footprint, enabling better heat dissipation, plus faster memory support
The screenshot shared by Twitter user Revegnus hides the RAM count of the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, but it is running the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 as the Galaxy S23 Ultra, according to Geekbench 6. The single Cortex-X3 core, which normally operates at 3.20GHz, is running at 3.36GHz in this tablet. While the GPU clock speeds are not mentioned, the upgraded version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 operates at 719MHz instead of 680MHz, delivering a small boost in graphics performance.
In an earlier specifications rundown, the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra was said to support up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, whereas the Galaxy S23 Ultra is limited to 12GB of LPDDR5 memory. Firstly, we believe that the inclusion of faster RAM may be one of the contributing factors to why the tablet performs better. For the second reason, because the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra features a significantly larger footprint than the Galaxy S23 Ultra, it will mean that Samsung will have ample use to incorporate a bigger cooling solution.
The larger size of the tablet plays a pivotal role in heat dissipation, and with the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra obtaining a single-core and multi-core score of 2,054 and 5,426, respectively, in Geekbench 6, you can clearly spot the benefits. Keep in mind that the top-tier tablet is said to arrive with a gargantuan-sized 14.6-inch display, making it significantly larger than any Galaxy S23 model (Galaxy S23 Ultra scores are given below). The upcoming slate is practically the same size as a laptop, so having a proper heatsink was simply included in the package.
Unfortunately, given the state of Samsung’s Exynos division, the only powerful SoC to use right now is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Qualcomm does have the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 beats it in the single-core result and is only slightly slower in multi-core performance. As Qualcomm switches to a chipset launch that sports the company’s custom Oryon cores, perhaps we will see a Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra successor featuring the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 so it goes head-to-head against Apple’s M-series of iPad Pro models.
