Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974) Performance Preview: Qualcomm Mobile Development Tablet Tested
by Brian Klug on June 18, 2013 8:00 PM ESTFinal Words
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 is quite possibly its most ambitious SoC to date. The goal? To drive absolute performance while maintaining power efficiency. While Snapdragon 600 was clearly about delivering evolutionary gains in performance, Snapdragon 800 intends to compete with ARM's Cortex A15 and Intel's Bay Trail platform.
On the CPU performance front, Snapdragon 800's 2.3GHz Krait 400 cores do appear to hold their own quite well against ARM's Cortex A15. In some cases ARM holds the advantage, while in others the higher clocked Krait 400 takes the lead. We still have the question of power to answer, but Qualcomm bets it can deliver A15-like performance without A15-like power thanks to the 28nm HPM process at its foundry partners.
Qualcomm didn't have any power demos setup, so power analysis and battery life performance will have to come at a later date, but the claim is better performance at equivalent platform power as Snapdragon 600.
On the GPU side, we have a new king. Adreno 330 delivers huge performance improvements over Adreno 320 and everything else we've tested thus far. Snapdragon 800 is the new benchmark to beat. It's very clear to me why many tablet designs scheduled for later this year are based on Snapdragon 800 silicon.
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Krysto - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
"The overall graphics score from Adreno is amazing. We're looking at almost 2x the next fastest contender here, the Adreno 320 based Snapdragon 600."Why is that so amazing? Adreno 320 came out first last fall, which is about a year before S800 with Adreno 330 comes out. Are you saying you're surprised mobile GPU's can double in performance every 12 months?
nunomoreira10 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
On the same process nod, hell yeahAenean144 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Not exactly the same process node, and we don't know TDP yet.richworks - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
please excuse my ignorance but how is TDP related to the process node?dishayu - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
In the great equalizer charts, can someone please explain how GeForce 8500 manages to outperform the 7900 GTX in DXBenchmark 2.7? The 8500 had similar performance to a 7600GS from what i remember.nunomoreira10 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Uniform shaders i believeRyan Smith - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Unified rather than uniform, but yes. We did an article in April looking at the issue in greater depth: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6877/the-great-equal...Speedfriend - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Where will the new generation Atom show up in the list? As I understand it, it will have graphics comparable to the HD4000 in the Ivy Bridge, so in theory it should outperform this Qualcomm chip?psychobriggsy - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
No, it will have graphics based upon the HD4000 architecture - but it will have fewer units and run at a lower speed, in order to attain TDP requirements.FwFred - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
The number of EUs does not directly tie to TDP. See HD5000 vs HD5100. The clock speed is important, and wider but slower is more efficient.