Understanding Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810: Performance Preview
by Joshua Ho & Andrei Frumusanu on February 12, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SoCs
- Qualcomm
- Mobile
- Gobi
- Snapdragon 810
Final Words
In light of everything, it seems that Snapdragon 810 was not as the rumors claimed. In my experience, I didn’t notice any of the development devices getting hotter than what I’d come to expect from a modern SoC. In most cases, it appears that CPU performance is about what we’d expect from a cluster of four Cortex A57s at 2 GHz, although there are a few anomalous results that could be a concern. If anything, it’s clear that the CPU isn’t really an area of weakness on the Snapdragon 810, especially with all of the work that Qualcomm has done for an energy aware scheduler to maximize the performance and efficiency of their big.LITTLE implementation.
Outside of the CPU, it’s evident that Qualcomm will retain their traditional lead in the modem and RF space, as OEMs will continue to adopt parts of RF360 along with Qualcomm modems and transceivers to ensure maximum performance on flagship smartphones and other high-end mobile devices. I don’t believe any other company will really be able to beat Qualcomm in this space, as they strongly emphasized just how well-validated their modems are and the extent to which they implement standards properly to work with operators around the world without issue.
While my time with the Snapdragon 810 hasn’t revealed any significant issues, the real concern here seems to be more along the lines of the GPU performance. While ALU performance and compute performance in general are significantly improved with the Adreno 430, the performance uplift doesn’t really seem to be as large as one might hope. Although Qualcomm is trying to sell the idea of a 4K tablet with the Snapdragon 810, it feels as if it’s too early to try and drive such high resolutions when the GPU can’t handle it. In order to see an appreciable increase in performance this year, it’s likely that OEMs will need to stay with 1080p or at most QHD display resolutions to really deliver improved graphics performance for gaming and other GPU intensive use cases.
As we’ve mentioned before, it seemed that Qualcomm stumbled a bit with the launch of Apple’s A7 SoC. While it seemed that Snapdragon 810 might have relatively little competitive advantage over other SoCs, in the past few months it’s become clear that Qualcomm has been leveraging their strengths to ensure that they remain a strong choice for SoCs this year. Although the GPU and memory subsystem appear to be a bit weak, overall 2015 remains promising for Android flagships, even if an OEM can’t design their own SoC.
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JoshHo - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Comparing the Snapdragon 810 to the Exynos 5433 wouldn't be of much value as the S810 won't be competing with the Exynos 5433 in flagship 2015 devices. We hope to make a valid comparison to an Exynos SoC in the near future.warreo - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
I disagree. This article is already primarily a comparison of S810 and S805, which like the Exynos will obviously not be competing for flagship 2015 devices. Does that make the comparison invalid? No, it's just a matter of context. People know that Exynos 5433 is an older SoC, but it's still interesting to see how S810 compares to it, just like it is interesting to see how it compares to S805.In reading this article the most interesting takeaways that I got are that on the CPU side, S810 is in a dead heat with Exynos (or barely outperforms it), and on the GPU side, there was a more substantial outperformance (call it 20-25%) vs. Exynos. The sad thing is that I had to draw that conclusion myself, because it was barely addressed in the article.
As an aside, can someone please learn me on how this performance is considered good when Exynos 7420 is right around the corner? Am I missing something?
Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
The vast majority of users will want to compare performance to the S805, seeing as the 5433 is only found in one variant of the Note 4 and probably won't bee seeing any other implementation.As for your last point, we just can't comment on performance of unreleased products.
warreo - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Unfortunately, I still disagree. While most people will never use the 5433 because it is limited to the Note 4, it is still a relevant comparison because the S6 will use the 7420, which is the next iteration of the 5433. Lest we forget, there are (likely) millions of people who will buy or consider buying the S6, making the comparison against 5433 an early preview of 7420 vs. S810 which I'm willing to bet is HIGHLY interesting to readers of this site.No direct comments on the unreleased 7420 would be necessary, just a more indepth discussion on how the S810 fares against 5433 would be helpful and let readers extrapolate to 7420 themselves. The reality is, the data and benchmarks are all there, I'm just a bit mystified why it is apparently not worth the effort to add the % difference into the table and discuss those results more in the text of the article.
I'll make this my last comment on the matter as you've at least shown you've thought about the matter and had a reason as to why you didn't really discuss Exynos. I remain cynical as to whether this is a good reason (or even the true reason), but I do at least appreciate the responses. I hope you'll take my comments in the spirit in which they were given: constructive criticism to improve the quality of the article.
lopri - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Millions of people considering the S6 will want to know how S810 (or rather Exynos 7420) performs compared to S600/S800/S801, because those are the platforms they are currently using. Millions of people also do not have access to the Exynos 5433 Note 4, and will not be upgrading from or to it. It would be akin to comparing some obscure Xeon CPU to widely popular Core i5 CPU.I fully expect there will be a comparison between S810 and whatever else it competes against in due time.
Jumangi - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
Millions? Let's be real here. 99%+ of the people who go out to buy the next Galaxy phone or any smartphone for that matter won't have the slightest clue of the SoC in the thing.tdslam720 - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Way to miss out on all the hype. Take some hints from Pro Wrestling or UFC. Samsung vs Qualcomm is the hype right now. Exynos vs 810 . You claim people want to see 810 vs 805, no one cares about that. Give us 810 vs Exynos and get tons more ad money while maintaining your credibility. Right now it just looks like Qualcomm is influencing you to play nice.melgross - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
You say no one cares about that, but that's just you saying that. Samsung doesn't sell a whole lot of Notes, particularly to the number of devices Qualcomm sells into.tdslam720 - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
No but they'll sell millions of S6s which is basically the same chipblzd - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
We should care about a CPU in a phone that we will never use? Because the next iteration perhaps we will be able to use? Um no.S800 vs S810 is what I want to know personally.