The Snapdragon 865 Performance Preview: Setting the Stage for Flagship Android 2020
by Andrei Frumusanu on December 16, 2019 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Qualcomm
- Smartphones
- 5G
- Cortex A77
- Snapdragon 865
Final Thoughts
Today’s preview focused solely on the performance metrics of the new chipset, which only cover a very small subset of the new features that the chip will be bringing to devices next year. A lot of the talking-points of the new SoC such as 5G connectivity, or the new camera and media capabilities, are aspects for which we’ll have to wait on commercial devices.
For what we’ve been able to test today, the Snapdragon 865 seems very solid. The new Cortex-A77 CPU does bring larger IPC improvements to the table, and thanks to the Snapdragon 865’s improved memory subsystem, the chip has been able to showcase healthy performance increases. I did find it odd that the web benchmarks didn’t quite perform as well as I had expected – I don’t know if the new microarchitecture just doesn’t improve these workloads as much, or if it might have been a software issue on the QRD865 phone; we’ll have to wait for commercial devices to have a clearer picture of the situation. System performance of the new chip certainly shouldn’t be disappointing, and even on a conservative baseline configuration, 2020 flagships should see an increase in responsiveness compared to the Snapdragon 855.
AI performance of the new chip is also improved – although our limited benchmark suite here isn’t able to fully expose the hardware improvements that the S865 brings with it. It’s likely that first-party camera applications will be the first real workloads that will be able to showcase the new capabilities of the chip.
On the GPU side, the improvements are also quite solid, but I just have a feeling that the narrative here isn’t quite the same anymore for Qualcomm, as Apple’s the elephant in the room now here as well. During the launch of the chipset the company was quite eager to promote that its sustained performance is better than the competition. While we weren’t able to test this aspect of the Snapdragon 865 on the QRD865 due to time constraints, the simple fact is that the chip’s peak performance remains inferior to Apple’s sustained performance, with the fruit company essentially dominating an area where previously Qualcomm was king. In this regard, I hope Qualcomm is able to catch up in the future, as the differences here are seemingly getting bigger each year.
Overall, the Snapdragon 865 seems like a very well-balanced chip and I have no doubt it’ll serve as a very competitive foundation for 2020 flagships. Qualcomm’s strengths lie in the fact that they’re able to deliver a complete solution with 5G connectivity – we do however hope that in the future the company will be able to offer more solid performance upgrades; the competition out there is getting tough.
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yankeeDDL - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
No, I was looking at the Web benchmarks. All of them are miserable compared even to the iPhone X.And Web browsing is certainly a key part of mobile experience.
joms_us - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
And yet in real world comparison, iPhone is faster only in handful of sites (excluding apple.com LOL) by millisec. Does that look miserable to you? =DNicon0s - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
Yes and have you actually seen an Android flagship that performs noticeably worse than an iphone(any iphone) in web browsing? Because I sure haven't.What I have seen is Android phones with better connection speed and better reception in general, especial in crowded places like concerts, stadiums, subways etc. In those places the performance from the iphone x was actually 0 in many instances because there was no signal. If we are talking about the mobile experience let's not ignore the Modem.
s.yu - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
"If we are talking about the mobile experience let's not ignore the Modem."And there are connectivity tests for that, although controlling variables in a connectivity test is almost impossible outside of lab conditions.
Ultimately these are separate tests and test entirely different aspects. You're free to test both, but if you try to test them simultaneously outputting one single result, you will obtain one worthless data point.
Wilco1 - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
Synthetic browsing benchmarks depend highly on software implementation and tuning, so they are not useful to compare CPU performance.yeeeeman - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
A bit MEH...Alistair - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
The Android fanatics are out tonight. I only buy Android phones, period. Clearly Apple's CPUs are miles ahead in performance. Anyone use the latest iPad Pro? It's faster than any Windows laptop I've bought or used personally. Boss gave us the latest and greatest dual core HP ultra slim laptop, and I immediately replaced it with a Ryzen 8 core computer and said "I don't use laptops for real work". We don't need benchmarks to tell us how fast Apple's CPUs are (though Andrei's benchmarks are perfectly valid), it is immediately apparent when comparing vs. similarly clocked Intel products. The reasons Ryzen and Intel seem great right now are high clocks and many cores. Run your 9900k in 2 core mode, at 2.6 Ghz and squirm at its low speed. That's what the iPhone uses, a low clocked dual core. Put 8 together, and run it at 4 Ghz, and you have a monster.id4andrei - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
You're forgetting a stripped down mobile OS and relatively stripped down mobile apps that are part of the speed equation.Alistair - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
that has nothing to do with it, that's what I'm saying, that's what Andrei is sayingAlistair - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
the other Andrei lol