In the coming months, Qualcomm is expected to unveil its next-gen flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. This will be the first Qualcomm chipset built on TSMC’s 2nm process, so obviously there’s a lot of excitement for it and to see how it performs. There might be even good news for gamers, as according to the latest reports, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro could boost FPS with upscaling.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro boost FPS with upscaling
For those unfamiliar, upscaling is the process where it takes a lower-resolution image or video and enlarges it to fit a higher-res display. However, you know that taking a 640×480 photo and upscaling it to a 4K display is going to look horrendous, namely due to it looking extremely pixelated.
However, that’s where the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 upscaling tech comes in. The tech reportedly works two ways: upscaling a lower native resolution to a sharper one and generating AI frames between real ones to push frame rates higher. This is similar to DLSS Frame Generation on PC.
The rumors claim that Qualcomm will bring AI Frame Fusion technology to the chipset. But to be more specific, it could only arrive in the Pro version of the chipset. This is because of the Adreno 850’s GPU shader processor, which will support two dedicated Matrix ALU blocks. These Matrix ALU blocks are missing from the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the standard Gen 6 chipset will be “worse” than the Pro version. If anything, we think it better distinguishes between both models. Qualcomm or phone makers could then advertise devices with the Pro chipset as being better for gaming or multimedia.
Why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing
On the surface, the non-Pro chipset missing out on AI Frame Fusion sounds like a loss, and it is to a certain extent. But is it a bad thing? We don’t think so. According to the rumors, the Pro version of the chipset is said to hit historical pricing. This is because of its support for LPDDR6 RAM. Given the ongoing memory crisis, the 2nm chipset combined with LPDDR6 RAM is going to cost a small fortune.
This means that phones that plan to take advantage of it will be prohibitively expensive. But like we said, it’s not really a bad thing. Phone makers might choose to use the chipset for niche devices, specifically for gaming or content creation. Everyone else will probably be more than happy with the standard version.
So unless you’re really into gaming, specifically AAA titles with high-end graphics and textures, you’re probably not going to miss out on that much.
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