Google‘s custom silicon efforts have faced consistent critiques regarding thermal management and sustained performance. Now, early reports suggest the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s Tensor G4 might be particularly susceptible to this issue.Disappointing: Google Tensor G4 loses over 50% of its performance in throttling test
A user on X, @callmeshazzam, shared concerning findings from a CPU throttling test on their pre-ordered Pixel 9 Pro XL. The benchmark shows the Tensor G4 loses up to 50% of its processing power under extended load.
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The stress test tracks the frequency of all eight CPU cores within the Tensor G4. After just three minutes of pushing the phone to its limits, throttling appears to kick in. Performance continues to plummet until the four-minute mark, when the CPU is estimated to have lost nearly 60% of its potential.
The raw performance figures from the test show that the Tensor G4 peaked at 341 GIPS (giga instructions per second), with an average of 246.6 GIPS.
At its most aggressive throttling, the chip reportedly dropped to a mere 145.5 GIPS—just 42.6% of its peak performance. The performance seems to partially recover afterward, stabilizing at around 65% of its maximum potential.
Looking at the frequency chart from the test, the Tensor G4’s performance cores appear to have plummeted to as low as 1.32 GHz, while the efficiency cores reached a minimum of just 570 MHz.
Google remains tight-lipped about the official specifications of the Tensor G4, but Geekbench results hinted at a single core reaching 3.1 GHz, three clocked at 3.6 GHz, and four efficiency cores at 1.95 GHz.
It’s important to note that instructions per second (GIPS) isn’t the most comprehensive performance metric, and stress tests inherently push devices to their absolute limits. In real-world scenarios, performance degradation is likely to be milder. However, these early reports suggest Google might still need to optimize thermal management for the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 Pro XL.Disappointing: Google Tensor G4 loses over 50% of its performance in throttling test
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