A newly added Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 variant, identified as SM8850-1-AB, signals Qualcomm’s latest move to optimise its flagship platform for gaming-focused devices, with the upcoming Redmi K100 Pro set to utilise this chipset.
Qualcomm has quietly added a new variant of its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile platform to its official website, extending the chip family with a model aimed more clearly at gaming handsets. The new part, carrying the code SM8850-1-AB, is listed as the processor for the upcoming Redmi K100 Pro, according to the Chinese report that first highlighted the change. Qualcomm’s own product pages describe the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 as a flagship smartphone platform built around its third-generation Oryon CPU and designed for high-end performance, on-device AI and advanced imaging.
On paper, the new V-series chip is very close to the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Qualcomm’s technical material shows the same basic CPU layout, with two prime cores at up to 4.6GHz and six performance cores at 3.62GHz, alongside an Adreno GPU at 1.2GHz. Core platform features also remain intact, including the Hexagon NPU, X85 5G modem, FastConnect 7900 connectivity, LPDDR5X memory support, UFS 4.1 storage and Qualcomm’s Spectra image processor.
The main hardware difference is in Adreno High Performance Memory, or HPM, which is used to help the graphics subsystem sustain higher performance in demanding games. The standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 carries 18MB of this dedicated memory, while the new SM8850-1-AB version drops to 12MB. Even so, Qualcomm still lists the broader gaming feature set on both chips, including Tile Memory Heap, Mesh Shading, Unreal Engine 5 optimisations, Snapdragon Game Super Resolution 2.0, Adreno Frame Motion Engine 3.0 and hardware ray tracing.
The addition takes the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 family to four identified variants. The standard SM8850-AC remains the mainstream version, while SM8850-1-AD is an overclocked model used in some Samsung flagships and gaming devices from brands such as RedMagic and Legion. Qualcomm also offers SM8850-5-AC, a seven-core version for the foldable Oppo Find N6. The new SM8850-1-AB gives phone makers another option for gaming-focused devices that may be priced below the very top tier, and the first handset expected to use it is the Redmi K100 Pro, due to launch in China on August 11. Poco’s international rebrands of the K100 Pro and K100 Pro Max are also likely to inherit the same platform.
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