Google's Tensor chipset has never been particularly noteworthy in the performance department It has always lagged behind Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon chip and Apple's A-series silicon Google has been touting the upgrades made to the Pixel 9's Tensor G4, especially the efficiency improvements, but it appears that it may still fall flat in the performance department

A graph from a CPU throttling test app by user @callmeshazzam on X shows that the Tensor G4 inside the Pixel 9 Pro XL may be throttled by as much as 50% This means that Google may have intentionally throttled the chip's performance, and temperature regulation seems to be a possible reason for this

According to stress tests, the frequency of the Tensor G4's performance core dropped from 310 GHz to 132 GHz, while the efficiency core dropped from 192 GHz to 057 GHz This is quite disappointing, especially considering that all three Pixel 9 Pro models have larger vapor cooling chambers to ensure better heat dissipation

This improvement was sorely needed given that the Pixel 8 series had notable problems with overheating At the same time, however, it would have been nice to see an improvement in the amount of heat generated by the Tensor G4

As WCCFTech points out, there are some unknown factors, such as the ambient temperature when the Pixel 9 Pro XL was stress tested Besides, the site points out that the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 lost 46% of its performance during the same test, suggesting that the test itself is designed to push the smartphone's chip to its limits

Still, given Google's history of low benchmark scores, it is not great to see evidence of throttling We have yet to run a thorough benchmark test on the new Pixels, so we don't know how the numbers will compare to this stress test Furthermore, while benchmarks don't tell the whole story, it is still super disappointing to face the prospect of Tensor falling further behind its competitors

We'll have to wait and see how the Pixel 9 series actually holds up in testing