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
Final Words
Qualcomm tends to stagger the introduction of new CPU and GPU IP. Snapdragon 805 ultimately serves as Qualcomm's introduction vehicle for its Adreno 420 GPU. The performance gains there over Adreno 330/Snapdragon 801 can be substantial, particularly at high resolutions and/or higher quality settings. Excluding 3DMark, we saw a 20 - 50% increase in GPU performance compared to Snapdragon 801. Adreno 420 is a must have if you want to drive a higher resolution display at the same performance as an Adreno 330/1080p display combination. With OEMs contemplating moving to higher-than-1080p resolution screens in the near term, leveraging Snapdragon 805 may make sense there.
The gains on the CPU side are far more subtle. At best we noted a 6% increase in performance compared to a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801, but depending on thermal/chassis limitations of shipping devices you may see even less of a difference.
Qualcomm tells us that some of its customers will choose to stay on Snapdragon 801 until the 810 arrives next year, while some will choose to release products based on 805 in the interim. Based on our results here, if an OEM is looking to specifically target the gaming market I can see Snapdragon 805 making a lot of sense. For most of those OEMs that just launched Snapdragon 801 based designs however, I don't know that there's a huge reason to release a refresh in the interim.
I am curious to evaluate the impact of ISP changes as well as dive deeper into 4K capture and H.265 decode, but that will have to wait until we see shipping designs. The other big question is just how power efficient Adreno 420 is compared to Adreno 330. Qualcomm's internal numbers are promising, citing a 20% reduction in power consumption at effectively the same performance in GFXBench's T-Rex HD onscreen test.
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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.