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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Glindon - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I wonder how Rouge is going to compare to this. My guess is Apple will ship a rouge powered iPhone and iPad before devices start shipping with Qualcomm.xTRICKYxx - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Do you mean Rogue?Glindon - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Doh! Yeah, Rogue.MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
*Drool* I also love the level of transparency we're getting from Qualcomm even compared to a product cycle or two ago.bleh0 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
From what I'm seeing here this an amazing chip overall. That GPU really surprised me but I'm gonna wait till the battery life/power draw can be tested.nunomoreira10 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
if this thing keeps it´s power restrained to 3-4 watts the gpu perfomance per watts is astonishing.Alketi - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Wow, crushing performance. Two things stand-out.1. It's beating it's almost doubling it's closest Android competitor on some benchmarks.
2. A 1-year old Apple chip is still killing some benchmarks.
Way more exciting than the ~15% x86 gains / year.
One thing's for sure, the upcoming ARM-based HTPC's are going to absolutely kick ass.
jeffkro - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
The hardware is getting there for ARM HTPC but we need an Android OS with DVR functionality.karasaj - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
And this is why I'm dying to get an internship with Qualcomm next summer... they're going to become the Intel of mobile :)tuxRoller - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
They already are. Look at they're market cap.