The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 might be more capable than you thought. ETA Prime on YouTube has shown the Galaxy S24 Ultra running a good number of PC games with an emulator called Winlator. Although the emulator does not officially support the SoC, modified versions offer a workaround.
As for the PC games the phone ran in the video, they include some of the classics like Fallout 4, Far Cry, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and Bioshock Remastered. The emulator, however, is capable of running more games, including Cuphead, which can run at a constant 60 FPS on the Galaxy S24 Ultra (512 GB cur. $1,240 on Amazon).
However, to achieve a PC-like gaming experience, ETA Prime used the Samsung DeX Feature. This allowed for simple screen output with a very Windows-like interface. Additionally, although the modified version of Winlator has support for Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, it runs in what appears to be Chinese, and ETA did not find the option to change the language to English.
Another thing to note is that ETA couldn’t get Steam installed in Winlator. So, for the video, the YouTuber relied on GoG game installers and mentioned that DRM-free game repacks would also work. Overall, at the current stage, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 showed promising performance on the modified emulator. With optimizations, gaming performance can be much better.
