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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BenSkywalker - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Legal studies I am lacking, you are correct, alas you can't keep out of the press how much trouble QC is in for their practices-https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/201...
China fined them for a billion already, Korea for $850 Million, Taiwan for another $750 Million- US suit is in progress.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
No I'm comparing the same methodology on the devices, active system power. The Shield TV on the X1 does 12W at 61fps. The QRD845 did 82fps at 4.4W.Nowhere in this article nor from Qualcomm is there the pure GPU power figure published, but always the system power. Your Nvidia figure is running at half performance meaning up to a 3x higher efficiency point. The GPU at full power is at 5-6W and that's why the Shield and Switch need an active fan to cool them.
The gap is not closed by process normalisation.
BenSkywalker - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Samsung says the gap is entirely closed by process normalisation alone(20nm<35%14nm<,40%10nmLPE<15%10nm LPE) , their claims- but hey, they just actually make the chips. What do the people who run the 10nm fab know compared to you, right?Three years later, they have a competitive part, you want to consider that a QC win, well, you are clearly their target customer. Spend more on lawyers, less on engineers :)
mfaisalkemal - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
after calculate with samsung process normalisation, nvidia still have a gap around 20% worse than qualcomm on gfxbench 3.0 manhattan.Nvidia tegra x1 : 12W * 0.3315 = 3.978 W (Normalize from 20nm to 10nm)
61FPS @ 3.978W -->15.33FPS/W
Adreno 640
82FPS @ 4.4W --> 18.63FPS/W
mfaisalkemal - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
i mean adreno 630 lolBenSkywalker - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
Could you provide some links? Seems odd that the Adreno 640 uses the exact same wattage on two different benches.Also- your wattage consumption assumption negates the earlier link I provided showing a massive efficiency gain in terms of performance/watt once you moved away from nearing thermal limits. Either you would be able to clock the part higher at the same power level(reduced leakage, better matching of optimal power usage for the die etc) or you would use less power- not to mention you would no longer be using active cooling for something that low power(again reducing power draw).
That would assume, of course, that no other improvement was possible in the last *THREE YEARS* since we saw this level of performance.
BTW- We could also ask things like why is tessellation performance still *half* of a three year old SoC, but that would imply that Qualcomm actually cared about moving forward with technology.
mfaisalkemal - Monday, February 12, 2018 - link
that data was from Andrei Frumusanu comment, and i think he test it but not published. yup your're right nvidia better on tesselation offscreen test, but adreno 630 better on texturing offscreen(15424mtexel/s vs 13427mtexel/s) and i guess gfxbenchmark car chase test(tesselation test) adreno 630 better than tegra x1 although the tesselation offscreen worse.your link provided why so low wattage(1.51W) i think because nvidia only estimate gpu power without ram power, in this article andrei and ryan estimate system power(device substract idle power like display etc.
Kvaern1 - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
I'd be much more disappointed with NVidia if Qualcomm could make GPUs as well as them.Now, if only NVidia could make a competitive CPU.
Eximorph - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
I have the shield tv, shield k1 and an lg g5 ( tegra x1, tegra k1 and adreno 530) let me tell you that the tegra x1 is powerful but let's be honest. First The tegra x1 is connected to a power sources, second the tegra x1 is on max performance mode at all time, 3rd it have fans and 4th lets go to the specs, 256 cores at 1000 mhz vs 256 cores at 624 mhz on the adreno 530 we are talking about 376 mhz more per core for the tegra x1 over the adreno 530, screen resolution 1080 vs 2k. Now lets under clock the x1 to a 624 mhz and let put a 2k resolution screen and let see whats happen ? The result with just a 2k screen is the next one, Manhattan 3.0 offscreen, google pixel c 46 fps adreno 530 46 fps. So the true here is that Qualcomm is a beast on the gpu side and nvidia, apple and amr have alote to learn. Qualcomm is not behind, Qualcomm is far ahead. a really small chip with a really low power consumption and a great performance. The tegra x1 do not have nothing to look against the adreno 630.Eximorph - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link
https://wccftech.com/snapdragon-820-benchmarks/