Galaxy S25 Ultra Benchmarks! vs S24 Ultra
In my comments section, it seems that many people believe that Samsung really hasn't changed the S25 Ultra that much compared to the S24 Ultra. The design has changed quite a bit on the surface of things, but the most significant changes & upgrades are beneath the surface & not visible to the human eye. In this video, I'm that's what I'm going to show you. So, stick around. You're going to want to see this.
I have the S25 Ultra, with the exclusive overclocked Snapdragon Elite for Galaxy chip and 12GB of RAM. I've got the S24 Ultra Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy 12GB RAM, & the Oneplus 13 with the standard version of the Snapdragon Elite chip, available to all manufacturers. All phones use the same UFS 4.0 storage. There are no phone cases that can prevent heat from escaping. Resolution and refresh settings will be set to the highest. All three phones are 100% charged and left at room temperature for 5 minutes after charging.
Devices and Key Specs
You should know a few important side notes before we run this graphic-intensive, ray-traced gaming test. The three phones all have been locked in at 120Hz. The Galaxy S25 Ultra Display, compared to the S24 Ultra, despite being identical in resolution, brightness & pixel density, The S25 Ultra Display is said to be a newer version that's 20 to 30% more power efficient. And this is a big one. The size of the cooling chamber size on the S25 Ultra has increased by ___%. So now, you know. Let's see how this plays out.
Benchmark Performance
So the benchmark test I'm running here is the '3DMark Solar Bay Stress Test' This is designed to mimic a heavy gaming workload with ray-tracing maxed out. It consists of a 1-minute sequence repeated 20 times. Each loop will generate a score based on frame rates, temperatures, and battery usage. It should be clear at the end how much of an upgrade the S25 Ultra is over the S24 Ultra and what kind of advantage the exclusive Snapdragon Elite chip has over the regular Snapdragon Elite chip. Now, time is of the essence, so let's skip the thermal imaging right after the test.
Thermals explained
So here are the thermal readings taken immediately after the 20-minute stress test. Let's start with the visible differences between the S24 and S25 Ultra. So the S24 Ultras heat is contained mainly in that top right corner, and the darker the colour, the cooler the temperature. So you might think that because the phone's lower half is cooler, that's a good thing. Wrong.
If you look at the S25 Ultra, the heat has spread across a much larger surface area on the back. So there's a lot more room for the heat to escape & cool the Chipset faster. So, the 40% increase in the vapour cooling chamber is the real deal. The hottest spot on the device is instantly around a 1-degree cooler.
The Oneplus 13, similar to the S24 Ultra, contains most of the heat up here in the top right, and you can tell by the orange colour gradient it's moving down the device, but it's not escaping as quickly, with its hottest spot being 54.4 degrees, which is very high. Usually, throttling starts at around 45 degrees.
So now, let's break the stats. I will do this in 4 sections to make it easier to understand. Best battery, consistent frame rates, steady temperature, and peak performance.
The best peak performance was a hands-down win for the Galaxy S25 Ultra. That's 5.16% better than the Oneplus 13 and could be due to the overclocked chip.
The most consistent frame rates go to OnePlus, ranging from 24fps at its lowest to 51fps at its peak. The peak frames are slightly higher on the S25 ultra at 56 fps. This might be due to Oneplus allowing the phone to be kept at a very high temperature without throttling and Samsung playing it more safely.
Best Heat Management is close between the S24 Ultra and S25 Ultra, but the S25 does better off the mark with a slightly more gradual temperature rise. Which is this red line.
Best battery efficiency is another win for the S25 ultra, with it losing 8%, the S24 ultra losing 9%, and the Oneplus lost 12%.
To summarise the improvements between s24 ultra and s25. 39.01% better peak performance, 2.6% better stability and the S24s 7th loop score are the same as the S25 ultras 20th. That's a big difference.
So let me know. Are you surprised at the performance difference between the S24 Ultra and S25 Ultra? And if you were one of the people who thought that the Galaxy S25 Ultra hasn't evolved much since last year. Did this surprise you? Did this change your mind? And if you know someone who thinks it's not that different, send them this video.
I'd like to hear what you think of the overclocked version of the Snapdragon Elite versus the regular Elite. Let me know. And let me know if there's any way you think I can improve on these types of tests in the future & what other phones you'd like to see tested in this way here on the channel. And if you make it to the end. Just know this, I appreciate you guys the most. And if you just subscribed, you are now one of the finest subscribers known to man. See you in the next one.
