Nearly two months have passed since the Exynos-powered Galaxy S21 was benchmarked online but in case there was still any question about it, yes, there will be a Qualcomm-powered variant as well. The Galaxy S21 carrying model number SM-G996U was benchmarked on Geekbench earlier today and the results show a Snapdragon 875 chipset coupled with 8GB of RAM.
The Snapdragon 875 SoC hasn't been officially announced yet but the chipset is expected to feature a tri-cluster CPU configuration including a single X1 high performance core, three Cortex-A78 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores. The Galaxy S21 benchmark at hand confirms that the CPU cores are working together with an Adreno 660 graphics chip.
Higher synthetic benchmark scores than the Exynos model
The Galaxy S21, model number SM-G996U, seemingly performs better than the Exynos alternative in Geekbench. Assuming that the benchmark results are legitimate, the device scored 1120 points in the single core tests and 3319 points in multi core.
In contrast, the Exynos-powered model had previously scored 1038 / 3060 points, suggesting that the solution provided by Qualcomm will once again deliver superior performance compared to Samsung's own chipset. However, as easy as it is to hate on the Exynos platform at this point in time, do keep in mind that early benchmarks are not always reflective of the final product's actual performance.
You've heard it all before but there's no way around the fact that the Galaxy S21 is still a couple of months away from an official announcement and Samsung probably hasn't finished optimizing it. Besides, keep in mind that the Exynos benchmarks are two months older than the latest Snapdragon 875 entry and a lot could have changed in the meantime.
