Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 21, 2014 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Snapdragon
- Qualcomm
- Mobile
- SoCs
- Snapdragon 805
CPU Performance
As always we'll start out our performance investigation with a handful of CPU bound web browser based tests. In all cases we used Chrome on the MDP/T. Remember there's only an 8% increase in peak CPU frequency here, so I wouldn't expect a huge difference vs. Snapdragon 801.
Here the MDP/T scales pretty well, showing a 6% improvement in performance over the Snapdragon 801 based Galaxy S 5. In the case of the GS5 we are looking at a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 implementation, so the improvement makes sense. Both the Cortex A15 (TF701T/Shield) and Apple's Cyclone (in the iPad Air) are higher performing designs here. Since there's no fundamental change to Krait's IPC, the only gains we see here are from the higher clock speed.
Kraken appears to be at its limit when it comes to Krait 400/450, there's effectively no additional frequency scaling beyond 2.3GHz. We're either running into an architectural limitation or limits of the software/browser combination itself.
Similarly we don't see any real progress in the Google Octane test either. Snapdragon 805's CPU cores may run at a higher peak frequency but that's definitely not the story here.
Basemark OS II
Basemark OS II gives us a look at native application performance across a variety of metrics. There are tests that hit the CPU, GPU as well as storage subsystems here. The gains here are exclusively on the graphics side, which makes sense given what we've just seen. Snapdragon 805's biggest gains will be GPU facing.
Geekbench 3.0
Although I don't typically use Geekbench, I wanted to include some numbers here to highlight that the increase in memory bandwidth for S805 over S801 doesn't really benefit the CPU cores:
| Geekbench 3.0 | |||||
| Snapdragon 801 2.3GHz (HTC M8) | Snapdragon 805 2.7GHz (MDP/T) | % Increase for S805 | |||
| Overall (Single thread) | 1001 | 1049 | 4.8% | ||
| Overall (Multi-threaded) | 2622 | 2878 | 9.7% | ||
| Integer (Single thread) | 956 | 996 | 4.2% | ||
| Integer (Multi-threaded) | 2999 | 3037 | 1.3% | ||
| FP (Single thread) | 843 | 925 | 9.7% | ||
| FP (Multi-threaded) | 2636 | 3155 | 19.7% | ||
| Memory (Single thread) | 1411 | 1406 | 0% | ||
| Memory (Multi-threaded) | 1841 | 1949 | 6% | ||
I wouldn't read too much into the multithreaded FP results, I suspect we're mostly seeing differences in thermal dissipation of the two test units. A closer look at the memory bandwidth numbers confirms that while the 805 has more memory bandwidth, most of it is reserved for GPU use:
| Geekbench 3.0 - Memory Bandwidth | |||||
| Snapdragon 801 2.3GHz (HTC M8) | Snapdragon 805 2.7GHz (MDP/T) | % Increase for S805 | |||
| Stream Copy (Single thread) | 7.89 GB/s | 8.04 GB/s | 1.9% | ||
| Stream Copy (Multi-threaded) | 9.53 GB/s | 10.1 GB/s | 5.9% | ||
| Stream Scale (Single thread) | 5.36 GB/s | 5.06 GB/s | - | ||
| Stream Scale (Multi-threaded) | 7.31 GB/s | 7.63 GB/s | 4.3% | ||
| Stream Add (Single thread) | 5.27 GB/s | 5.2 GB/s | - | ||
| Stream Add (Multi-threaded) | 6.84 GB/s | 7.51 GB/s | 9.8% | ||
| Stream Triad (Single thread) | 5.64 GB/s | 5.85 GB/s | 3.7% | ||
| Stream Triad (Multi-threaded) | 7.65 GB/s | 7.89 GB/s | 3.1% | ||
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Krysto - Sunday, May 25, 2014 - link
Beast? Where? These numbers look absolutely pathetic. 40 percent faster than Adreno 330 will put it right around...HALF of Tegra K1's GPU.jospoortvliet - Monday, May 26, 2014 - link
Which you can get where exactly? I will believe NVIDIA the day they actually DELIVER, as opposed to make empty promises like for, oh , every previous tegra soc?lmcd - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
Probably half of Tegra K1's power consumption, too. Particularly the Project Denver version.2far - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
well it turns that it will!nerd1 - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
I don't understand why anand keeps using Chrome browser for android devices, and Safari browser for IOS. Safari is very well optimized for IOS (naturally), and chrome is NOT. For example the samsung's stock browser on GS5 is quite optimized and has benchmark results beating iPhone 5s.I admit all other sites has degenerated enough to publish some random 'impression' as review, but I still feel strong bias here. We have benchmark results, but they are many times cherry picked to make apple products looks better. And it is very bad because now everyone takes review here "objective".
Myrandex - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
I like that Chrome is used on the Android devices. It is a browser available for all products. It is the default browser on the pure devices (such as the nexus devices as even none nexus devices running standard Android). If Google doesn't optimize it for Android than it is their loss, but I personally use it on my Android devices as well.anonymous_user - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
I don't know if each Android smartphone has the same stock browser but I do know Nexus devices no longer have the stock browser and instead use Chrome. Wouldn't using one browser for all Android devices help with benchmark consistency?nerd1 - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
We should at least have benchmark results using the stock browser that ships with the device.akdj - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
I think you'd be pretty bummed to find out the 'true' speed of old reliable, your TW browser. Have you tried a third party browser? Chrome? Dolphin? Mercury or Photon? Opera or Skyfire? Next or Firefox? I'm a browser junky. If you're not upset with me calling the TDub browser crap, drop me a line and we can discuss. I've literally downloaded all of the worth a bean over the past six, seven years;)Flunk - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
The stock browser for Android is Chrome, Samsung just adds more junk to their images.