The Snapdragon 845 Performance Preview: Setting the Stage for Flagship Android 2018
by Ryan Smith & Andrei Frumusanu on February 12, 2018 12:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Snapdragon
- Qualcomm
- Smartphones
- SoCs
- Snapdragon 845
First Thoughts
Coming into 2018, Qualcomm is facing what we expect to be a busy and certainly competitive year for the company in the smartphone platform space. Iterating on the well-received Snapdragon 835 – and without the benefit of a new manufacturing node – is no easy task. All the while Apple has once again thrown down the gauntlet with their A11 SoC if one wants to argue about top tech, and even in the Android space Qualcomm isn’t the only high-end SoC vendor, as we await to see what Samsung’s Exynos 9810 and its new Exynos M3 CPU cores can achieve.
Still, it’s a challenge that Qualcomm should be prepared for, if not a bit unevenly. With a focus on architecture the company has been hard at work for the Snapdragon 845, and as a result while it’s very much a Qualcomm SoC, it’s also not just a rehash of Snapdragon 835. Both the CPU and GPU are seeing substantial overhauls, not to mention smaller upgrades across the board for everything from the modem to the audio codec. And while Qualcomm rightfully argues that there’s more to a platform than just raw compute performance – that all of these pieces contribute to the overall user experience – they remain vital to device performance and battery life. Which is to say that Qualcomm is innovating where they need to in order to continue improving the heart of many flagship 2018 Android smartphones.
Overall the Snapdragon 845’s system performance is a mixed bag. We had higher expectations from the new CPU changes, but it seems we’ve only gotten incremental improvements. Web workloads seem to be the Snapdragon 845’s forte as that’s where we see the largest improvements. ARM is working on a long awaited overhaul as the Austin team is busy with a brand new microarchitecture which should bring larger generational improvements, but alas only with the next generation of SoCs in 2019. For many flagship Android phones, 2018 should remain another conservative year and we should not have too high expectations.
But with that said, whatever Qualcomm doesn’t quite bring to the table with their CPU, they more than make up on the GPU side of matters. Qualcomm’s new Adreno 630 GPU easily impresses and widens the gap to the nearest competition. Compared to the Exynos 8895 and Kirin 970 I expect the Snapdragon 845 to have a 3.5-5x PPA advantage when it comes to the GPU. The competition should be worried as it’s no longer feasible to compensate the power efficiency disadvantage with larger GPU configurations and there is need for more radical change to keep up with Qualcomm.
And while we weren’t able to test for system power efficiency improvements for this preview, we weren’t left empty-handed and were able to quickly do a CPU power virus on the QRD845. The results there have turned out promising, with 1W per-core and slightly under 4W for four-core power usage, which are very much in line with the Snapdragon 835. The new system cache and GPU improvements should also noticeably improve SoC – and in turn device – efficiency, so I’m expecting that 2018’s Snapdragon 845 powered devices to showcase excellent battery life.
What remains to be seen then is how this translates into shipping products. Previous Qualcomm device previews have turned out to be rather accurate, but handset manufacturers have countless ways to customize their phones, both for good and for bad. What we can say for now is that it looks like Qualcomm has once again delivered its handset partners a solid SoC from which to build their flagship phones. So we’re eager to see what retail phones can deliver, and ultimately how the Snapdragon 845 fits into the overall market for 2018 Android flagship smartphones.
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generalako - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
No, Qualcomm actually didn't list those charts themselves. Qualcomm, on their own site even, stated during and after the launch, that the SD845 will provide "up to 25% performance improvement" over the SD835. That was with the stated clockspeed of 2.8 GHz.Reflex - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Um, you just confirmed Stormy's point. Re-read Stormy's comment and then your reply...tuxRoller - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
The Qualcomm slide said 25-30% increase@2.8GHz with the smaller cores increasing their performance by 15%@1.8GHz.The next slides looks like its from arm's a75 announcement (no mention of Qualcomm brand names and the graph is the same one that arm uses) not the Qualcomm presentation.
From the article:
"The Kryo 385 gold/performance cluster runs at up to 2.8GHz, which is a 14% frequency increase over the 2.45GHz of the Snapdragon 835's CPU core. But we also have to remember that given that the new CPU cores are likely based on A75's we should be expecting IPC gains of up to 22-34% based on use-cases, bringing the overall expected performance improvement to 39-52%. Qualcomm promises a 25-30% increase which is at the low-end of ARM's projections.'
The author speculates about perf based on the arm graphs & the freq increase that Qualcomm announced but Qualcomm themselves didn't suggest such numbers.
My guess as to why integer IPC didn't increase by much is the power issue Andrei had alluded to before. Iow, the freq scaling provided enough perf so that Qualcomm didn't have to employ the more expensive changes that would've been required for the IPC gains.
mfaisalkemal - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
@andrei_frumansunu and @ryan_smithany date when we can read review from iphone 8 and iphone x?
i just curious about long term performance manhattan 3.1 compared ipghone 7 and snapdragon 835.
any chance to compare gpu of android and ios device with real world benchmark games Tainted Keep? nvidia use that game when tegra x1 launch.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
The A11 generally throttles 35% from its peak performance figures while the 835 maintains full or 90%. I'll include the iPhones in the new full review.We don't have any way to benchmark iOS devices in real games.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
> I'll include the iPhones in the new full review.And by that, I meant general next full device reviews, not specifically iPhone reviews.
mfaisalkemal - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
sorry not explain you tell little detail, tainted keep have in-game benchmark offscreen 1080p in normal and extreme mode.nvida tegra x1 ultra score: http://www.legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/201...
iphone 7+ extreme score: https://i.imgur.com/3v5Tgxt.jpg
ipad pro(a9x) extreme score: https://i.imgur.com/9pKrQBE.jpg
thanks andrei, i'm eagerly waiting for the review :)
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
The game doesn't even allow me to use the extreme settings on Qualcomm devices and in the normal benchmark it's just vsync limited at 60 fps - so I don't think we'll do anything with it.mfaisalkemal - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
because driver or bug maybe, what a pity!how about test peak GFLOPS with opencl for GPU on next benchmark?
i found this benchmark application named CLPeak on playstore.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.c...
Oneplus 5 (Adreno 540)
Single-precision compute (GFLOPS)
float : 294.65
float2 : 285.81
float4 : 311.02
float8 : 265.02
float16 : 308.34
half-precision compute (GFLOPS)
half : 570.72
half2 : 539.62
half4 : 610.79
half8 : 314.82
half16 : 313.73
source: https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2011570/
with alu result from your test about 50% improvement, i think adreno 640 is not far from tegra X1 (512GFLOPs) in smartphone device!!!
darkd - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Note that Ravn is a studio Nvidia has contracted things like this out to multiple times. As with most Nvidia contractors, they tend to have features/optimizations that are Nvidia only, and tend to be almost pointedly unoptimized for tiling GPUs. You can see something to this effect in the Ravn supplied benchmark for Antutu v7.