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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ArthurG - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
ok so this is the year when Qualcomm lost their leadership as 2014 fastest Android SoC appears to be Tegra K1. Much faster GPU (26fps in Manhattan offscreen, 60fps in T-rex offscreen) and faster CPU too (see Xiaomi MiPad benchs).20nm Erista with Maxwell coming same time as S810, Nvidia will even make the gap wider on next generation...
testbug00 - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
Does it matter if Nvidia cannot do it without a fan and higher power usage?The SHIELD is a perfect example of why Nvidia fails to win against Qualcomm in meaningful terms: In the Phone/Tablet market, performance does not matter. Pref/power, and, absolute power do matter.
Until Nvidia learns to make things in lower power envelopes (the T4i is a decent example) they will lose to Qualcomm in meaningful ways.
On that note, The "amazing" K1 chip will be clocked in the 600Mhz range in the first Tablets it comes in... How downclocked will Qualcomm's part be?
Anyhow, if you need absolute performance in the SoC space (aka you are using it as a desktop, or, perhaps a laptop) NVidia is the player to go to. Otherwise, Qualcomm is plain better for phones/tablets.
grahaman27 - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
thats not true, take the tegra note for example. the K1 uses an updated A15 that is more power efficient. then when the custom denver chip hits, it will start taking names and cashing checks.testbug00 - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
When Nvidia gets a product with the lines in them, and power tests are done, I will believe it.Until than, Tegra 2, 3, and 4 all cast doubt on that.
__could it happen__ YES!
__Will it happen__ I DOUBT IT :/ :(
fivefeet8 - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
You do realize that people have already done power tests with the TK1 boards right? Or are you pretty much ignoring anything until you get your "product with lines in them" argument. If that's the case, then I'm pretty sure the Snapdragon 805 fits in the same boat.testbug00 - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
Qualcomm has a history of products being used by OEMs... NVidia has Tegra 2... tons of large OEM design wins... Tegra 3, many large OEM design wins, but, far less... Tegra 4... no large OEM design wins, until they finally got a win in China.Nvidia did not lose design wins magically. Tegra consumed more power than they claimed, and, may have been slower than their claimed.
fivefeet8 - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
Why are you arguing about design wins when I'm talking about your power test argument? Have you not seen the power information from users with a TK1 board or not? Or are simply ignoring their findings?testbug00 - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
Nvidia lost design wins because they lied about their power usage and performance to OEMs repeatably.Nvidia had plenty of support with Tegra 2, the OEMs though the clockspeeds and power usage looked great... the final product, well, noticeably slower at around the original power promised. So, OEMs grow wary of the next Tegra, but, NVidia might have made an honest mistake... They get number for Tegra 3... Looks great... Get real Tegra 3... substantially slower, more power (at that slower speed) than told.
Nvidia tries to Tell OEMs about their great new Tegra product... and OEMs do not use it, well, major mobile OEMs do not. MS, HP, a few other companies, and, later a large Chinese company.
I have no faith in Nvidia as far as Tegra is concerned. Companies that got Tegra 2, 3 (and perhaps Tegra 4 chips) got real chips. They ran at the clockspeeds NVidia promised, at the power Nvidia promised.
Cherrypicking chips is not hard. It was done to large OEMs, in large enough numbers to let them design many design wins.
I'm not sure why you think it cannot be done for developer boards.
Tegra K1 does look like a good Tegra product finally coming around though. I do not think it will be as good as Nvidia says, based off of the past, but, I don't think it will be as run-of-the-mill as the rest of the Tegra chips were.
ams23 - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
Tegra 4/4i was used by various large OEM's including: Asus, HP, Toshiba, Xiaomi, LG, Huawei, ZTE. Of course, that is just smoke, because it has nothing to do with Tegra K1 performance nor power efficiency.testbug00 - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - link
Here is Nvidia's website showing Tegra devices: http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-phones-tablets....How many TEGRA 4 (Tegra 4i is a different product, it is a fine product) phones are there? One. By an OEM that also used Qualcomm for the same Phone... I am sure the battery life tests are are the Qualcomm device (happy to be proven wrong)
Otherwise, you have a bunch of PC manufacturers (not large mobile OEMs...) with Tablets/laptops/AIOs. Oh, and, 2 of the 11 products are made by NVidia themselves.
Tegra 4i on the other hand, well, it is what Tegra 3 should have been than some. It is a fine product.