Galaxy S25 Ultra New Cooling System Tested: Does it beat the iPhone 16 Pro Max and OnePlus 13?
Galaxy S25 Ultra New Cooling System Tested: Does it beat the iPhone 16 Pro Max and OnePlus 13?
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If we had to name the biggest upgrade in... Galaxy S25 Ultra, we can say it's the new Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset inside it without any hesitation.
This is the first time we've seen a 3nm chip on a flagship Android phone, and expectations are very high.
But with all this increased power, Samsung faces a challenge: it must be able to cool the processor well, so it doesn't overheat.
In order to do this, Samsung says it has a 40% larger vapor chamber for cooling in the S25 Ultra compared to the S24 Ultra. Is this enough? Let's find out.
GPU stress test
We use the famous 3D Mark standard (specifically, extreme wildlife stress testing).
While other gaming benchmarks only give you initial performance, this runs for 20 minutes and you can see how performance changes as the chip heats up. So this type of usage is more realistic and gives you the full picture.
While the S25 Ultra starts on a high note reaching around 6,200 points in the test and beating competitors like iPhone 16 Pro Max, you notice that after just three or four minutes, performance drops significantly due to thermal throttling.
Galaxy S25 Ultra: Initial result of 3D mark
In fact, the performance line flattens out at around 3,000 points, half the raw score. This is certainly disappointing.
competition The OnePlus 13 uses the same chipset as the Snapdragon 8 Elite and has a similar raw score, but its line flattens out at a much higher score of around 4,500 points. This is 50% longer performance compared to Galaxy S25 Ultra!
Galaxy S25 Ultra: Lowest 3D Mark score shows throttling issues
We don't know what's going on here, but there are two possibilities. The first is that the Galaxy's vapor chamber cooling system is not sufficient, and the second is that Samsung is implementing stricter software limits in order to prevent the chip from overheating.
However, in this current state, the S25 Ultra barely beats the previous generation S24 Ultra in extended performance.
As you can see, it also has the lowest “stickiness” number, meaning it drops the most from the first round to the lowest number of points.
OnePlus wins the performance competition
The OnePlus 13 is the current leader in sustained gaming performance
Interestingly, the conclusion here is that so far, OnePlus 13 It is winning the performance race.
in spite of OnePlus 13 Having the same processor as Galaxy S25 Ultrait is very advanced in continuous gaming performance. This is even more impressive considering that technically, OnePlus is using a slower version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, as the Galaxy was announced to have a special overclocked model of this chip.
We will continue to investigate this matter and conduct further testing.
If we had to name the biggest upgrade in… Galaxy S25 Ultra, we can say it’s the new Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset inside it without any hesitation.
This is the first time we’ve seen a 3nm chip on a flagship Android phone, and expectations are very high.
But with all this increased power, Samsung faces a challenge: it must be able to cool the processor well, so it doesn’t overheat.
In order to do this, Samsung says it has a 40% larger vapor chamber for cooling in the S25 Ultra compared to the S24 Ultra. Is this enough? Let’s find out.
GPU stress test
We use the famous 3D Mark standard (specifically, extreme wildlife stress testing).
While other gaming benchmarks only give you initial performance, this runs for 20 minutes and you can see how performance changes as the chip heats up. So this type of usage is more realistic and gives you the full picture.
While the S25 Ultra starts on a high note reaching around 6,200 points in the test and beating competitors like iPhone 16 Pro Max, you notice that after just three or four minutes, performance drops significantly due to thermal throttling.
Galaxy S25 Ultra: Initial result of 3D mark
In fact, the performance line flattens out at around 3,000 points, half the raw score. This is certainly disappointing.
competition The OnePlus 13 uses the same chipset as the Snapdragon 8 Elite and has a similar raw score, but its line flattens out at a much higher score of around 4,500 points. This is 50% longer performance compared to Galaxy S25 Ultra!
Galaxy S25 Ultra: Lowest 3D Mark score shows throttling issues
We don’t know what’s going on here, but there are two possibilities. The first is that the Galaxy’s vapor chamber cooling system is not sufficient, and the second is that Samsung is implementing stricter software limits in order to prevent the chip from overheating.
However, in this current state, the S25 Ultra barely beats the previous generation S24 Ultra in extended performance.
As you can see, it also has the lowest “stickiness” number, meaning it drops the most from the first round to the lowest number of points.
OnePlus wins the performance competition
The OnePlus 13 is the current leader in sustained gaming performance
Interestingly, the conclusion here is that so far, OnePlus 13 It is winning the performance race.
in spite of OnePlus 13 Having the same processor as Galaxy S25 Ultrait is very advanced in continuous gaming performance. This is even more impressive considering that technically, OnePlus is using a slower version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, as the Galaxy was announced to have a special overclocked model of this chip.
We will continue to investigate this matter and conduct further testing.
