Qualcomm has quietly introduced a new version of its flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. Listed on the company’s official website under the model number SM8850-1-AB, the new V-series variant is designed with gaming in mind and is set to debut inside the upcoming REDMI K100 Pro series.
Despite its gaming branding, the new chip shares almost all of its hardware with the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
Same flagship performance, with a gaming focus
According to Qualcomm’s official specifications, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V-series uses the same CPU and GPU configuration as the regular 4.6GHz Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
It features two Oryon Prime cores clocked at up to 4.6GHz, six Performance cores running at up to 3.62GHz, and an Adreno GPU operating at 1.2GHz.
The chipset also keeps the rest of Qualcomm’s flagship platform intact, including the Hexagon NPU, Snapdragon X85 5G modem, FastConnect 7900, support for LPDDR5X RAM, UFS 4.1 storage, and the Qualcomm Spectra ISP.
One key difference
The only hardware change Qualcomm lists is the amount of Adreno High Performance Memory (HPM).
The standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 comes with 18MB of Adreno HPM, while the new SM8850-1-AB variant reduces that to 12MB.
Aside from that, Qualcomm lists identical CPU, GPU, AI, connectivity, and imaging specifications for both versions.
Qualcomm now offers four flagship variants
With the launch of the SM8850-1-AB, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 family now consists of four variants:
- SM8850-AC: Standard version used in most flagship smartphones.
- SM8850-1-AD: Higher-clocked version found in Samsung flagship devices, along with RedMagic and Lenovo Legion gaming phones.
- SM8850-5-AC: Seven-core version powering the OPPO Find N6 foldable.
- SM8850-1-AB: New gaming-focused V-series variant that will debut in the REDMI K100 Pro lineup.
The addition gives smartphone makers another flagship option aimed at gaming devices without changing the platform’s CPU or GPU clock speeds.
Gaming features remain the same
Although Qualcomm is positioning the SM8850-1-AB as a gaming-focused chipset, its official documentation shows that the same gaming technologies are also available on the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
These include:
- Tile Memory Heap
- Mesh Shading
- Unreal Engine 5 optimizations
- Snapdragon Game Super Resolution 2.0
- Adreno Frame Motion Engine 3.0
- Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
Both the standard and V-series chips are also marketed with the slogan “Game smarter, not harder.”
First phones confirmed
The REDMI K100 Pro series, scheduled to launch in China on August 11, will be the first smartphones powered by the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V-series chip.
The chipset is also expected to appear in the POCO F9 Pro and POCO F9 Ultra, which are widely rumored to be global versions of the REDMI K100 Pro and REDMI K100 Pro Max.
For now, it’s unclear whether other smartphone brands will adopt the new gaming-focused variant in future flagship devices. However, Qualcomm’s latest addition gives manufacturers another option for building performance-oriented smartphones while keeping the same flagship platform.