Chipset prices are getting out of control and companies are looking for some cheaper alternatives. The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE is an interesting case – Samsung chose an in-house chip, but not the same one found in the Galaxy S24 and S24+ phones in some parts of the world. Instead, it used the Exynos 2400e.
Samsung is keeping most of the details under wraps, but it has confirmed that the prime Cortex-X4 cores run at up to 3.1 GHz instead of the 3.2 GHz that the regular 2400 chip does.
Now, peak clock speed matters for demanding workloads (e.g. launching an app) and not as much for sustained performance (e.g. gaming). Still, we don’t know if the other cores have been dialed back. There is also no information on Xclipse 940 GPU clocks.
Benchmarking the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE
A full review will follow in-depth testing, but for now we just got to run some CPU and GPU benchmarks – here’s a first look at what the Galaxy S24 FE is capable of.
Starting with Geekbench, it has a 10-core CPU with a mix of 1x Cortex-X4, 5x A720, and 2x A520. It’s definitely a strong contender in multi-core performance. We’ve included the Galaxy S24+ because the phone is similar in size but uses the full-fat Exynos 2400. The difference is small to say the least.
The Xiaomi 14T Pro uses the Dimensity 9300+, which has not one but four Cortex-X4 cores. It pulls forward a little, but only a little. Then there’s last year’s Galaxy S23 FE – even though it’s only a year old, it uses a two-year-old chipset (Exynos 2200 or Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, we’ve included both). The 70% performance increase over the new model is impressive.
Turning to the single-core test, the 0.1GHz difference between the Exynos 2400 and 2400e should be felt most strongly here. And yet it basically doesn’t matter. The 14T Pro’s prime Cortex-X4 is clocked at up to 3.4GHz, but its score is only 4% higher. The Pixel 9 Pro XL, a $1,200 flagship whose Tensor G4 chip shares lineage with the Exynos, trailed in both tests.
geekbench 6
- multi core
- single core
iPhone 16 Plus
128 GB, 8 GB RAM
Xiaomi 14T Pro
1 TB, 12 GB RAM
Galaxy S24 Ultra
512GB, 12GB RAM
Galaxy S24+
512GB, 12GB RAM
Galaxy S24 FE
128gb, 8gb
pixel 9 pro xl
128 GB, 16 GB RAM
Galaxy S23 FE (Exynos)
128 GB, 8 GB RAM
Galaxy S23 FE (Snapdragon)
128 GB, 8 GB RAM
Galaxy A55
128 GB, 8 GB RAM
Next, we’ll look at the GPU. The Xclipse 940 is an AMD RDNA 3 design and has proven to be quite powerful. Not as powerful as the Adreno 750 inside the Snapdragon-powered Galaxy S24 Ultra, but still. And it blows the old S23 FE out of the water.
The more interesting comparison is to the iPhone 16 Plus. It’s not a flagship, but Apple charges $900 for it – whereas the Galaxy S24 FE will only cost you $650. The iPhone came out ahead by about 4% in the Wildlife Extreme test, but lost by 23% in the Solar Bay test. Solar Bay is a ray tracing test – did we mention that AMD GPUs have hardware acceleration for it? The Apple A18 chip does the same, but Apple’s GPU lags behind (the A18 Pro is faster than the A18 in this test, but still lags behind the Exynos 2400e).
3dmark (offscreen)
- Wild Life Extreme (2160p)
- Solar Bay (1440p)
Galaxy S24 Ultra
adreno 750
1440 x 3120 pixels
Galaxy S24+
xclipse 940
1440 x 3120 pixels
iPhone 16 Plus
Apple GPU (5-core)
1290 x 2796 pixels
Xiaomi 14T Pro
Immortalis-G720 MC12
1220 x 2712 px
Galaxy S24 FE
xclipse 940
1080 x 2340 pixels
Galaxy S23 FE (Snapdragon)
adreno 730
1080 x 2340 pixels
pixel 9 pro xl
Mali-G715 MC7
1280 x 2856 pixels
Galaxy S23 FE (Exynos)
xclipse 920
1080 x 2340 pixels
Galaxy A55
xclipse 530
1080 x 2340 pixels
The Exynos 2400e is shaping up to be an interesting chipset – you get 90%-95% of the performance of the Exynos 2400 and you pay less for it. Again, the Galaxy S24 FE launched at $650 for an 8/128GB phone, while the Galaxy S24 (8/128GB) with a non-E chip was priced at $800 at launch and the S24+ (12/256GB) was priced at $1,000.
Lower clock speeds can have an impact on power usage – there’s a slight decrease here on the S24 FE with a 4,700mAh battery compared to 4,900mAh on the S24+. This is something we will test during the review process.
And we will run more benchmarks and do other tests as well. Samsung claims it has improved cooling compared to the S23 FE (the vapor chamber is 10% larger – not much, but it’s something). We’ll have more to share when we get back to the office.