Samsung is gearing up for its next big Galaxy Unpacked event, which is now expected to kick off on February 25. With the company already confirming its first 2nm GAA mobile chipset, the Exynos 2600, back in December, there’s been plenty of time to fine-tune performance ahead of the Galaxy S26 launch. And based on newly surfaced benchmark numbers, those last-minute optimizations may be paying off—especially on the graphics side.
Fresh Geekbench 6 results suggest the Exynos 2600 is showing a noticeable uplift in GPU performance when tested using the Vulkan API. Compared to earlier Vulkan scores recorded months ago, the chip now delivers around an 8 percent improvement overall, pointing to continuing optimization work on Samsung’s Xclipse 960 GPU.
Here’s how the Vulkan scores have progressed:
– Geekbench 6 GPU Vulkan score (September 2025): 22,829
– Geekbench 6 GPU Vulkan score (January 2026): 24,726 (about 8 percent higher)
The updated score also narrows the performance gap against its key rival. Against the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the earlier difference was around 21 percent, but the new numbers indicate that gap has been reduced to roughly 12 percent:
– Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5: 27,708 (around 12 percent ahead of the latest Exynos 2600 Vulkan result)
Not every graphics test improved, though. While Vulkan performance climbed, the OpenCL category in Geekbench 6 reportedly didn’t show the same progress, suggesting Samsung’s gains may be more tied to Vulkan drivers, scheduling, or workload-specific tuning rather than a broad boost across all compute paths.
Where things get especially interesting is in the individual Vulkan sub-tests, where the Exynos 2600 posts some dramatic jumps. The biggest leap appears in Particle Physics, where performance surged by 61 percent compared to the prior run:
– Particle Physics (September 2025): 61,697 (2,715 FPS)
– Particle Physics (January 2026): 99,708 (4,388 FPS, 61 percent improvement)
Another major gain showed up in Edge Detection, with a 51 percent increase:
– Edge Detection (September 2025): 24,454 (907 MP/s)
– Edge Detection (January 2026): 36,985 (1,370 MP/s, 51 percent improvement)
On the CPU side, clock speeds are also said to be up by 12 percent, which should translate into stronger single-core and multi-core performance as the Galaxy S26 release window approaches.
These early benchmark trends suggest Samsung is actively refining the Exynos 2600 in the final stretch, and the most meaningful changes may still be ahead. More detailed and repeatable performance testing will likely arrive closer to the Galaxy S26’s official debut, when broader benchmarks can confirm how these gains translate into real-world gaming, sustained performance, and efficiency.
