Qualcomm has quietly launched a new gaming variant of its flagship processor called the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V series. This silicon option features a modified memory configuration tailored specifically for high performance mobile gaming. The chip makes its official market debut inside the upcoming REDMI K100 Pro smartphone launching in China next week.
The hardware architecture of the SM8850 1 AB model matches the standard version in raw processing speeds. The package includes 2 high performance Oryon cores running at 4.6 GHz along with 6 secondary cores clocked at 3.62 GHz. The graphics tasks are handled by an Adreno GPU operating at 1.2 GHz. Despite these identical clock speeds, Qualcomm changed the memory layout. The standard version carries 18MB of Adreno High Performance Memory. This new gaming version drops that allocation to 12MB. The chip is lean.
The memory reduction does not impact the gaming capabilities. Mobile players still get hardware accelerated ray tracing and Snapdragon Game Super Resolution 2 0. It works. The silicon also handles Adreno Frame Motion Engine 3 0 and offers custom optimizations for Unreal Engine 5. Other built in hardware like the Hexagon neural processor, the Spectra camera processor, and the Snapdragon X85 5G modem remain unchanged.
This release brings the total number of variants in this processor family to 4 options. The lineup now consists of the standard chip, an overclocked version for Samsung and top tier gaming brands, a 7 core option for folding devices, and this new V series. The first phones using the new silicon will be revealed very soon. The REDMI K100 Pro will showcase the processor in China next week, giving the market its first look at how the modified memory affects real world frame rates.
