Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 vs Apple A16 Bionic

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CPU comparison with benchmarks


Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 CPU1 vs CPU2 Apple A16 Bionic
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Apple A16 Bionic

CPU comparison

Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 or Apple A16 Bionic - which processor is faster? In this comparison we look at the differences and analyze which of these two CPUs is better. We compare the technical data and benchmark results.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 has 8 cores with 8 threads and clocks with a maximum frequency of 3.00 GHz. Up to 16 GB of memory is supported in 8 memory channels. The Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 was released in Q3/2022.

The Apple A16 Bionic has 6 cores with 6 threads and clocks with a maximum frequency of 3.46 GHz. The CPU supports up to 6 GB of memory in 1 memory channels. The Apple A16 Bionic was released in Q3/2022.
Qualcomm Snapdragon (102) Family Apple A series (22)
Qualcomm Snapdragon SQ3 (1) CPU group Apple A16 (1)
2 Generation 16
Kryo 680 Architecture A16
Mobile Segment Mobile
-- Predecessor Apple A15 Bionic (5-GPU)
-- Successor Apple A17 Pro

CPU Cores and Base Frequency

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 is a 8 core processor with a clock frequency of 3.00 GHz. The Apple A16 Bionic has 6 CPU cores with a clock frequency of 3.46 GHz.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Characteristic Apple A16 Bionic
8 Cores 6
8 Threads 6
hybrid (big.LITTLE) Core architecture hybrid (big.LITTLE)
No Hyperthreading No
No Overclocking ? No
3.00 GHz
4x Kryo 680 Gold
A-Core 3.46 GHz
2x Everest
2.40 GHz
4x Kryo 680 Silver
B-Core 2.02 GHz
4x Sawtooth

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Processors with the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can process many calculations, especially audio, image and video processing, much faster than classic processors. Algorithms for ML improve their performance the more data they have collected via software. ML tasks can be processed up to 10,000 times faster than with a classic processor.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Characteristic Apple A16 Bionic
-- AI hardware Apple Neural Engine
-- AI specifications 16 Neural cores @ 17 TOPS

Internal Graphics

The integrated graphics unit of a processor is not only responsible for the pure image output on the system, but can also significantly increase the efficiency of the system with the support of modern video codecs.

Qualcomm Adreno 690 GPU Apple A16 (5 GPU Cores)
GPU frequency 1.34 GHz
-- GPU (Turbo) --
6 GPU Generation 13
7 nm Technology 4 nm
0 Max. displays 3
-- Compute units 20
-- Shader 640
No Hardware Raytracing No
No Frame Generation No
-- Max. GPU Memory 6 GB
12.0 DirectX Version --

Hardware codec support

A photo or video codec that is accelerated in hardware can greatly accelerate the working speed of a processor and extend the battery life of notebooks or smartphones when playing videos.

Qualcomm Adreno 690 GPU Apple A16 (5 GPU Cores)
Decode / Encode Codec h265 / HEVC (8 bit) Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode Codec h265 / HEVC (10 bit) Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode Codec h264 Decode / Encode
Decode Codec VP9 Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode Codec VP8 Decode / Encode
No Codec AV1 No
Decode Codec AVC Decode
Decode Codec VC-1 Decode
Decode / Encode Codec JPEG Decode / Encode

Memory & PCIe

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 supports a maximum of 16 GB of memory in 8 memory channels. The Apple A16 Bionic can connect up to 6 GB of memory in 1 memory channels.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Characteristic Apple A16 Bionic
LPDDR4X-2133 Memory LPDDR5-6400
16 GB Max. Memory 6 GB
8 (Octa Channel) Memory channels 1 (Single Channel)
68.3 GB/s Max. Bandwidth 51.2 GB/s
No ECC No
-- L2 Cache 20.00 MB
-- L3 Cache 24.00 MB
-- PCIe version --
-- PCIe lanes --
-- PCIe Bandwidth --

Thermal Management

The TDP (Thermal Design Power) of a processor specifies the required cooling solution. The Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 has a TDP of --, that of the Apple A16 Bionic is 7.25 W.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Characteristic Apple A16 Bionic
-- TDP (PL1 / PBP) 7.25 W
-- TDP (PL2) --
-- TDP up --
-- TDP down --
-- Tjunction max. --

Technical details

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 has a 0.00 MB cache, while the Apple A16 Bionic cache has a total of 44.00 MB.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Characteristic Apple A16 Bionic
5 nm Technology 4 nm
Chiplet Chip design Chiplet
Armv8-A (64 bit) Instruction set (ISA) Armv8.6-A (64 bit)
-- ISA extensions --
-- Socket --
None Virtualization None
No AES-NI No
Android, Windows 10 (ARM) Operating systems iOS
Q3/2022 Release date Q3/2022
-- Release price --
show more data show more data


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Here you can rate the Apple A16 Bionic to help other visitors make their purchasing decisions. The average rating is 4.4 stars (40 ratings). Rate now:


Average performance in benchmarks

⌀ Single core performance in 1 CPU benchmarks
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 (89%)
Apple A16 Bionic (100%)
⌀ Multi core performance in 1 CPU benchmarks
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic (72%)

Geekbench 5, 64bit (Single-Core)

Geekbench 5 is a cross plattform benchmark that heavily uses the systems memory. A fast memory will push the result a lot. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
1688 (89%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
1890 (100%)

Geekbench 5, 64bit (Multi-Core)

Geekbench 5 is a cross plattform benchmark that heavily uses the systems memory. A fast memory will push the result a lot. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
7538 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
5465 (72%)

Cinebench R23 (Single-Core)

Cinebench R23 is the successor of Cinebench R20 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
605 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
0 (0%)

Cinebench R23 (Multi-Core)

Cinebench R23 is the successor of Cinebench R20 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
3571 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
0 (0%)

Geekbench 6 (Single-Core)

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark for modern computers, notebooks and smartphones. What is new is an optimized utilization of newer CPU architectures, e.g. based on the big.LITTLE concept and combining CPU cores of different sizes. The single-core benchmark only evaluates the performance of the fastest CPU core, the number of CPU cores in a processor is irrelevant here.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
0 (0%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
2531 (100%)

Geekbench 6 (Multi-Core)

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark for modern computers, notebooks and smartphones. What is new is an optimized utilization of newer CPU architectures, e.g. based on the big.LITTLE concept and combining CPU cores of different sizes. The multi-core benchmark evaluates the performance of all of the processor's CPU cores. Virtual thread improvements such as AMD SMT or Intel's Hyper-Threading have a positive impact on the benchmark result.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
0 (0%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
6299 (100%)

Cinebench R20 (Single-Core)

Cinebench R20 is the successor of Cinebench R15 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
198 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
0 (0%)

Cinebench R20 (Multi-Core)

Cinebench R20 is the successor of Cinebench R15 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
1261 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
0 (0%)

iGPU - FP32 Performance (Single-precision GFLOPS)

The theoretical computing performance of the internal graphics unit of the processor with simple accuracy (32 bit) in GFLOPS. GFLOPS indicates how many billion floating point operations the iGPU can perform per second.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
Qualcomm Adreno 690 @ 0.00 GHz
0 (0%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
Apple A16 (5 GPU Cores) @ 1.34 GHz
1789 (100%)

AnTuTu 10 Benchmark

The AnTuTu 10 benchmark is one of the best-known benchmarks for mobile processors, which is now available in version 10. There is a version for Android-based smartphones and tablets, as well as a version for Apple mobile devices, i.e. iPhones and iPads.

The Antutu 10 benchmark has 3 phases. In the first phase, the device's RAM is tested, in phase 2 the graphics are tested and in the final phase the entire device is pushed to its performance limits by rendering 3D graphics.

Antutu 10 is therefore ideal for comparing the performance of different devices.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
0 (0%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
1394590 (100%)

AnTuTu 9 Benchmark

The AnTuTu 9 benchmark is very well suited to measuring the performance of a smartphone. AnTuTu 9 is quite heavy on 3D graphics and can now also use the "Metal" graphics interface. In AnTuTu, memory and UX (user experience) are also tested by simulating browser and app usage. AnTuTu version 9 can compare any ARM CPU running on Android or iOS. Devices may not be directly comparable when benchmarked on different operating systems.

In the AnTuTu 9 benchmark, the single-core performance of a processor is only slightly weighted. The rating is made up of the multi-core performance of the processor, the speed of the working memory, and the performance of the internal graphics.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
0 (0%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
947502 (100%)

Blender 2.81 (bmw27)

Blender is a free 3D graphics software for rendering (creating) 3D bodies, which can also be textured and animated in the software. The Blender benchmark creates predefined scenes and measures the time (s) required for the entire scene. The shorter the time required, the better. We selected bmw27 as the benchmark scene.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
1057 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
0 (0%)

Cinebench R15 (Single-Core)

Cinebench R15 is the successor of Cinebench 11.5 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
117 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
0 (0%)

Cinebench R15 (Multi-Core)

Cinebench R15 is the successor of Cinebench 11.5 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
771 (100%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
0 (0%)

Performance for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

Processors with the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can process many calculations, especially audio, image and video processing, much faster than classic processors. The performance is given in the number (trillions) of arithmetic operations per second (TOPS).
Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3
8C 8T @ 3.00 GHz
0 (0%)
Apple A16 Bionic Apple A16 Bionic
6C 6T @ 3.46 GHz
17 (100%)

Devices using this processor

Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 Apple A16 Bionic
Microsoft Surface Pro 9 Apple iPhone 14 Pro
Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max

News and articles for the Qualcomm Snapdragon Microsoft SQ3 and the Apple A16 Bionic


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