A Suspicious Geekbench Listing of Google Tensor G3 Is Out

Yesterday, an inside source gave out core information of the upcoming Google Tensor G3. That gave us early official information about the specifications of the chipset. In case you missed it, the upcoming Google Pixel 8 series will feature a new processor with several upgrades.

The upgrades include an improved CPU configuration, enhanced security features, and a new onboard GPU capable of ray-tracing. As far as I can tell, these upgrades should make the Tensor G3 better compete with the current flagships. But a Geekbench listing of the processor has popped out. And it says the complete opposite!

Even Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Shown to Perform Better Than Google Tensor G3

Revegnus has spotted a Geekbench listing for the Google Tensor G3. And interestingly, the listing is indeed present in the database of Geekbench. Take a look –

It says that the benchmark results are for “Google Factory build on Ripcurrent.” Nonetheless, as you can see from the listing, the Google Tensor G3 is shown to offer a single-core score of 1186. On the other hand, the multi-core score is at 3809.

To give you a perspective, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 scores 1615 in the single-core test of Geekbench 5. And for multi-core, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 gets 3840. So, in both cases, the Geekbench results show that the Google Tensor G3 performed worse than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. And the important part is that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is a last-generation chipset. It was released back in 2021.

The current generation flagship SoC, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, gets 1867 in single-core. And for the multi-core test, the 8 Gen 2 obtains an impressive 5137 score. That’s a big difference from what the Geekbench listing of the Google Tensor G3 is showing.

Is This Google Tensor G3 Listing Real?

There are a couple of red flags on the Geekbench listing of Google Tensor G3. Let’s take a closer look –

Not From a Recent Test

First of all, it shows that the chipset was tested on April 12. In other words, it’s not from a recent test. This indicates that the results are from an engineering sample. And engineering samples are very early versions of the final SoC. So, it’s okay for them to not perform good.

Mismatched Clock Speed Information

A closer look shows that the Geekbench 5 listing shows that it is a 9-core cluster. This matches the information we got yesterday. Even the core clocks match the information shared by the inside source. That is, the Tensor G3 has 4x cores @ 2.1 GHz, 4x cores @ 2.45 GHz, and 1x core @3.02 GHz.

But as Mapple_Gold points out, the Geekbench listing does not confirm that the SoC has a Cortex X3 core. As I covered yesterday, the single Cortex X3 core @ 3.0 GHz is one of the main highlights of the Google Tensor G3. And if the test was indeed on an SoC without the Cortex X3, the unimpressive scores do make a lot of sense.

The thing is, Geekbench scores can be easily manipulated. And the screenshot provided by Quadrans Muralis further solidifies this claim. As he shows, the Geekbench result was from a chipset that was running at @2.78 GHz. But the listing showed that it ran at 3.02 GHz.

Regardless, we can only hope that the actual benchmark scores for the Google Tensor G3 surpass those of the current listing. Otherwise, the Pixel 8 series will be weak against the competition. But for now, you should treat the listing information with a good grain of salt. And as always, we will update you when we get more concrete data about the SoC’s performance.

CPU Config Comparison of Google Tensor G3, Tensor G2, and Tensor G1

With all that said, let’s get quickly recap the information we got yesterday. Here, you should note that the Google Tensor G3’s info below is not from an engineering sample. Instead, it states the CPU configuration of the final version.

Cores	G1 (Pixel 6)	G2 (Pixel 7)	G3 (Pixel 8)
Big Cores	2x Cortex-X1 @ 2.8GHz	2x Cortex-X1 @ 2.85GHz	1x Cortex-X3 @ 3.0GHz
Mid Cores	2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.25GHz	2x Cortex-A78 @ 2.3GHz	4x Cortex-A715 @ 2.45GHz
Little Cores	Cortex-A55 x4 @ 1.8GHz	4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz	4x Cortex-A510 @ 2.15GHz