I gamed on 2026’s finest Snapdragon and Exynos flagship telephones — and the benchmarks lied

One factor I’ve wished to seek out out because the launch of the Galaxy S26 sequence is simply how effectively Samsung’s new Exynos 2600 chip and its Xclipse 960 GPU stack up when taking part in the newest Android video games. The model is clearly positioning it as a top-tier gaming platform, particularly with its dual-chip technique for non-Extremely flagships — some clients obtain Exynos variants, whereas the US and choose markets use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy — however can it actually compete with Qualcomm’s quickest chip within the enterprise?

Samsung’s overclocked ‘for Galaxy’ Snapdragon proved to be a marginal benchmark topper, leaving the Exynos 2600 with a number of work to do if Samsung desires to supply comparable efficiency and gaming expertise throughout its complete lineup. To see precisely the place Samsung’s new Exynos flagships stack up, I grabbed my Snapdragon-powered Xiaomi 17 Extremely, OPPO Discover X9 Professional with a MediaTek Dimensity 9500 onboard, and Google’s Tensor G5-equipped Pixel 10 Professional XL.

A fast have a look at benchmarks suggests the Exynos chip could path the highest Snapdragon and MediaTek opponents in peak efficiency, however ought to nonetheless outperform Tensor-based {hardware}. Nonetheless, real-world gaming efficiency usually tells a distinct story.

The primary recreation in my ordinary rotation is Genshin Influence. The open world, with all choices set to the utmost obtainable configuration and the body price set to 60fps, was as soon as a major stress check for high-end telephones. Nonetheless, most of right this moment’s flagship handsets deal with this setup with a tightly locked body price, and the Exynos-equipped Galaxy S26 Plus is not any exception.

Nonetheless, Google’s Pixel 10 Professional XL and its Tensor G5 chip battle extra noticeably. Its Creativeness Applied sciences PowerVR DXT-48-1536 GPU simply can’t sustain with the quickest Adreno, Mali, or Xclipse graphics models present in comparably priced flagship telephones, with gameplay barely hitting 45fps on common.

To additional differentiate efficiency, I turned to a high-refresh-rate title: Name of Obligation Cell. The sport’s Battle Royale mode combines open-world geometry with a most 120fps cap and fast-paced, demanding motion, making for a heavy workload. Nonetheless, on this check state of affairs, Samsung’s Exynos flagship is capped at 60fps, with no solution to unlock the extremely setting, even when graphics are turned down, regardless of being a number of months post-launch.

Efficiency nonetheless feels clean, however for aggressive, first-person gameplay, you may truly obtain a better body price on Google’s comparatively low-end Tensor G5, which holds nearer to 80fps. That’s not an enormous distinction in smoothness, however it reveals that GPU driver identification and chipset configuration lists can have a major affect on the graphical and efficiency experiences obtainable.

Primarily based on the Genshin Influence outcomes, I’d anticipate the Exynos chip to simply pull in a gentle 90fps on this check, and it’s completely doable it may attain near, if not lock, 120fps as effectively.

I finally discovered a recreation that lets the Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus run at 120fps: Asphalt Legends. This time round, the OPPO Discover X9 Professional doesn’t permit for a full 120fps unlock, whereas the Pixel 10 Professional XL actually struggles with the sport’s highest graphics settings.

The outcomes are way more corresponding to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, delivering very near 120fps all through. Nonetheless, the end result isn’t precisely clean (see beneath), hovering between 100 and 120fps. The 8 Elite Gen 5 is smoother in-game, locking at 120fps. The dips right down to 80fps are a distinct problem I’ve seen in different titles, which appears to be a power-scheduling problem on Xiaomi’s half.

Nonetheless, I observed the Galaxy S26 Plus grew to become fairly heat after only a single race in Asphalt Legends, whereas the opposite telephones all remained fairly cool. I proceed the check for longer to analyze what would occur to the telephone’s efficiency, and the outcomes aren’t nice.

With high-end graphics settings and a excessive goal body price, the Exynos 2600 warms up fairly shortly. Whereas peak efficiency was sustained for a few minutes, the telephone quickly pulled again fairly considerably, with body charges falling from round 113fps to nearer to 80fps over about 10 minutes (or 4 races).

This habits will not be distinctive to Exynos-based gadgets; all fashionable cell flagship chips scale back efficiency beneath thermal load. Nonetheless, the diploma and timing of throttling differ considerably throughout gadgets, cooling techniques, and firmware tuning, and Exynos appears to warmth up extra shortly than others. That is undoubtedly one thing to contemplate if you need a gaming telephone to maintain you entertained on a protracted each day commute.

Enjoying a small number of video games on the newest Android flagships has left us with fairly just a few issues to mull over. One of many main sticking factors via this check has been the affect that per-game optimizations and configurations have on the gameplay experiences obtainable, no matter how a lot theoretical graphics grunt your telephone has.

Regardless of being very succesful, the Exynos 2600 and Dimensity 9500 have been capped at 60fps in at the least one title, the place they might have carried out even higher. Snapdragon was not. 60fps is clean, after all, however once you’re paying for top-tier efficiency, you need to at the least have the choice to go full pelt once you need. This often performs into Pixel’s arms, which, whereas clearly inferior in benchmarks, can usually fall a lot nearer to the artificially restricted efficiency of different chips.

Pinning the blame right here is tough. On the one hand, recreation producers tweak their settings to make sure that shoppers aren’t upset by cranking the settings up too excessive, however this then places a further burden on recreation builders and distributors to maintain their lists updated.

On that thread, the Exynos 2600 has a thermal ceiling that’s simpler to hit than rival flagship chips when efficiency and graphics settings are cranked to the max, as our Asphalt Legend end result reveals. When gaming at average settings and decrease body charges, the chip is each bit nearly as good as its benchmark-topping Snapdragon and Dimensity rivals. Nonetheless, these two can run cooler for longer whereas pushing out extra frames on the similar time. On that metric alone, they’re the higher GPUs.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus, powered by the Exynos 2600, are succesful cell gaming platforms, with some caveats. Snapdragon- and MediaTek-based alternate options supply extra constant peak efficiency and decrease thermals in actual video games, whereas Google’s Tensor-based gadgets are likely to lag behind in most, however definitely not all, gaming eventualities.

For Samsung followers prioritizing high-end cell gaming, the exclusively-Snapdragon Galaxy S26 Extremely continues to be seemingly the most suitable choice.