Early benchmarks show the Asus ROG phone is faster than other S845-powered phones

Asus cherry-picked the best Snapdragon 845 units, the ones that can clock up to 2.96 GHz. This binning process gives the ROG phone a 200 MHz advantage over other flagships and gaming phones. To keep the faster chips cool, Asus put a copper heat spreader on them and connected it to a 3D vapor chamber. Was all of that worth it? Let’s look at what the early Geekbench scores have to say.

And the answer is - yes, there’s an advantage, but it’s slim. To be fair, the ROG phone is launching next quarter, so there’s time to improve on those results even further.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG phone
  9534
• Xiaomi Mi MIx 2S
  9158
• OnePlus 6
  9011
• HTC U12+
  9001
• Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact
  8487
• Sony Xperia XZ2
  8466
• Galaxy S9+ (S845)
  8349

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Asus ROG phone
  2547
• Xiaomi Mi MIx 2S
  2468
• HTC U12+
  2456
• Sony Xperia XZ2
  2454
• OnePlus 6
  2450
• Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact
  2446
• Galaxy S9+ (S845))
  2199

For example, it’s not clear if the benchmark benefited from the X Mode, which disables the four slow cores in the Snapdragon 845 and increases the minimum clock speed of the four big cores.

As you can see, the big cores provide most of the power in multi-core tests. With one core scoring around 2,500, four of them should hit 10,000. Except they don’t because of heat – one core can run cool, four need to clock down. So, disabling the four small cores leaves some headroom for the big ones to show their best.

The AeroActive cooler for the Asus ROG phone

Asus does offer an active cooling solution, the optional AeroActive cooler, for those long gaming sessions.

Source