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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TerdFerguson - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
I'm inclined to agree with you, especially after seeing the dual-channel 32-bit bus being described as having a total of 64 bits. Wow, that's as bad as marketing for 1990s consoles.extide - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
How is that bad marketing? A dual channel 32-bit bus IS effectively 64-bits wide ...dawheat - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
The reference platform has a 6.2” display - making it quite the gigantic phone. I'm guessing it avoids thermal issues which may impact other, more normal size phones.Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
The preview tests were actually done on the MDP tablet, not the MDP phone.dawheat - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Ouch - then this is really best-case performance of the S810 as I'd imagine the tablet MDP has way higher thermal headroom than the phones it's being compared to.lopri - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
I am usually very harsh on reviewers, but I do not think your argument holds up. Exynos 5433 is a vanity product. While technically interesting, it is used for one product (afaik) and even that product is not widely available. I would definitely prefer to learn the improvement of the S810 over S800/S805, being Qualcomm's generational product.And it is not like the review tried to hide the Exynos 5433 or anything. The numbers are right there for you to see. Furthermore, AT covered the Exynos 5433 very extensively only a few days ago.
Likewise, throttling or power is meaningless at this stage without knowing what the shipping product is going to be like. And I expect to see those information in due time. Unless you can point to false benchmark data, I do not see the merit in picking on every single aspect of an SOC that was not covered (yet).
Not everyone wants to read corporate conspiracy theories on a tech article, either. I, for one, do not like to read unverified rumors in a technical article.
Only thing that I agree with you about is the missing clock frequency information on the charts. But again, the focus is rightfully on S805 v. S810. I will give the authors a benefit of doubt.
Only thing that I do not like about the article is its timing. I mean, I haven't even finished the Exynos 5433 article yet and there are already 2 laptop articles and now an introduction to the S810.. It's too much information for me to digest. Obviously this is a subject point, and I do not expect everyone to agree with me.
warreo - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Exynos 5433 is indeed a vanity product, nobody is arguing otherwise. You are missing the point that I made earlier. Exynos 5433 is the immediate predecessor to the 7420. Hence, comparing the S810 to the 5433 is a good starting point for how the S810 will compare to the 7420, and it would be one completely based on real, hard data, not just speculation. Are you honestly saying that you would not be interested in a better preview of how the S810 vs. Exynos 7420 will shake out?lopri - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
I mean, if AT really wanted to boost S810's image the authors could have omitted the number from 5433 in Geekbench sub-score comparison. The rest of the charts also look free of manipulation, so I do not see how you get the impression.As you can see from this very comment section, not everyone is impressed by the S810. Apparently the authors did not do a good enough job - you know, the job you are insinuating here.
warreo - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
True enough, but the fact that AT provides the 5433 data makes it more mystifying why they almost completely gloss over it in the text (not to mention not provide the % differences in the tables). Josh and Andrei have already stated they intentionally kept the focus on S805 vs. S810, but my point is this would be a much stronger article if there was more depth given to the Exynos 5433 comparison. Clearly, I'm not the only one who thinks so.Tchamber - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
@warreoGet over yourself. So far the 5433 has made it into one product. We all know that it's a good performer, but the Snapdragon line makes it into many more devices...always has. What your asking would be like me writing to Car and Driver and saying "hey, you are guys are doing your comparisons wrong. I want you test your Corvettes, Camarros, and GT500s against a Lamborghini Aventador." Well, they have all the test results from the Lamobo...but that's just not what the others were made to compete with, so it would be meaningless to run them against each other at the road course. Do your own math if you don't like not seeing a percent sign with easy to digest material. All the time you've been talking down to AT you could have posted your own conclusions and helped out all those people who agree with you.