Did Google’s December Update Change Pixel Devices' GPU Performance?

We were tagged on a Reddit post titled “Something has changed...Pixel 10 GPU performance almost doubled after the update” by NotThatPro earlier this month and it piqued our interest. OP shared screenshots of their AnTuTu 11 tests before (GPU score of 102583) and after (GPU score of 182008) the update that rolled out on December 2nd 2025. The overall score did not increase by much, but the GPU score increased by a whopping 77.5%.

While small performance gains after a software update make sense, the astronomical increase without any hardware changes is a huge feat if true. Several replies talked about results from other benchmarking tools like 3DMark and Geekbench. Needless to say, we had to put this to the test.

Tests

We tested both the Pixel 10 and Pixel 9 Pro XL in two system states: the initial system builds from our most recent tests of the devices and the latest system builds.

Other than the varied build versions, we used our standard phone testing procedure where we average the results of three runs spaced 10 minutes apart to allow for cooling back to room temperature.

We used the following benchmarking tests:

1. Geekbench 6 (App Version 6.5.0): Provides both CPU and GPU benchmarks, with its GPU test using OpenCL, which focuses on compute workloads rather than heavy graphics rendering.
   1. CPU - Single-Core
   2. CPU - Multi-Core
   3. GPU - OpenCL
2. 3DMark (App Version 2.6.5025): Primarily GPU-focused and designed to simulate heavier, graphics-oriented scenarios.
   1. Steel Nomad Light (Test Version 10.6.2)
   2. Wild Life Extreme Stress Test (Maximum) (Test Version 1.1.14.3)
3. AnTuTu 11 (App Version 11.0.6): AnTuTu, a benchmark that is not a part of our standard testing procedure, combines CPU, GPU, memory, and UX tests into a single suite, offering broader system coverage. We only mention the following scores in the visualizations below because they are the most relevant ones.
   1. Overall Score
   2. GPU Score

Results

Google Pixel 9 Pro XL

For the 9 Pro XL, the results are an improvement but largely unremarkable. All the tests had a performance gain of less than 5% — nothing as pronounced as seen in the reddit post. Realistically, this is not going to translate into a perceptible performance boost in daily use.

Google Pixel 10

For 5 of the 7 tests, the gains and losses are within 2%, indicating that the update had close to no impact, most of the time. However, the Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL) test resulted in a substantial 22.7% gain, and the AnTuTu GPU test had a 75% gain that warranted a double-take by our testers.

As far as we can tell, the Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL) results are a consistent improvement, but the AnTuTu GPU test resulted in some inconsistencies on the Pixel 10’s initial system build. This is highlighted in the table below. Out of six runs, four clustered around 101,000, while two achieved a much higher score of ~177,000 – 179,000. Because of this spread, we expanded testing to six runs on both system builds.

The higher scores on the initial build occurred during runs two and three, performed sequentially under the same standard test conditions, with a ten minute cool-down and only a moderate battery drop (82% to 65%). We did not observe similar behaviour on the updated system build or on the Pixel 9 Pro XL, which is quite peculiar. We are unsure as of this point why we have seen such inconsistent results with successive runs of the same test.

Conclusions and Thoughts

While our test results can’t quite bring us to a full conclusion, we were able to reproduce the ~101,000 AnTuTu GPU score with the Pixel 10 before the update, and ~177,000 AnTuTu GPU score after the update. However, we were also able to achieve the ~177,000 AnTuTu GPU score before the update.

We suspect that the ~101,000 AnTuTu GPU benchmark scores are a result of some interactions between the benchmark, the system version, and the Pixel devices. It may be that the Pixel devices and hardware were always capable of higher GPU performance, but this benchmark was sporadically interacting with the rest of the system poorly. AnTuTu isn’t part of our standard benchmarks so we don’t have a back catalog of results to compare to, but the modest performance increases of other GPU benchmarks like 3DMark and Geekbench suggest that you may see some improvement in specific use-cases. Real world use will likely feel similar to before the update.

Appendix

Below are the six screenshots of our AnTuTu benchmark results on the initial system build of the Pixel 10.