Qualcomm announces its first actual laptop CPU - Snapdragon 8cx - Core i5 performance

[LAwLz]

9 hours ago, Arika S said:

but you can take it out of "S" mode. it's not that hard

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/4456067/windows-10-switch-out-of-s-mode

 

it's also free to do.

1) From what I've heard, it's only free for a limited time. Don't be surprised if it isn't a free thing in a few years.

2) I am a strong believer in "sane defaults". Locking everything down like Windows 10 S does is not a good default. It's a default Microsoft put in place to try and rob people of control over their computers.

3) Buying a Windows 10 S device will send a message to Microsoft that these devices sells, even if you install regular Windows 10 later. If people continue to buy Windows 10 S devices, Microsoft will keep pushing them. If nobody buys Windows 10 S devices, Microsoft will sooner or later give up. Probably later, knowing Microsoft.

[GoodBytes]

5 hours ago, vorticalbox said:

>This is based on single-core performance.

Considering that it is easier to beat multi-core performance by adding more cores.... which is what this CPU is... it has 8 cores (apparently... we will see if they are all 8 cores identical or using slower ones in combination of faster ones, or just switches between a set of dual/quad cores type of system), I doubt it will match Intel's latest and greatest i5 CPU.

 

Also you have to remember, like nearly all or all companies coming on stage and saying fancy numbers, they don't mention the benchmark, they don't mention IPCs compares to what... things are vague, poor graph are made, and data is cherry pick. It could be matching performance on Core i5 in "PC-Mar"k, or in "Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Benchmark Optimized for ARM64 processor" which is running under an ARM emulator on Core i5 U series.

 

That said,

1. They are not gaming CPUs by a long shot,
2. Probably the GPU helps a lot in providing a smoother feeling experience due to Windows 10 having many things GPU rendered, and web browsers are hardware accelerated these days.
3. System could be powered by a fast SSD which helps hide the CPU bottleneck when loading your "typical programs" like Office suits and web browser

Making all together, a fine experience for your typical computer user.

 

Also keep in mind that, Qualcomm selling point is not "we are faster than Intel" or high performance, it is:

• Battery life
• Gives you, you the typical average user, a great experience
• Fast LTE performance
• Connected Stand-by (basically like your phone. You allow Windows to get e-mail notifications and such, and press the power button (or open the lid if it is a laptop), and boom it is turned on... like your phone. No wait.

And Qualcomm was already delivering this with the first chip. The Snapdragon 835.

 

If you check reviews, no one complained about performance when running native ARM64 apps (well.. what is available), but rather the serious performance impact translating x86 instructions. This is where it just came down to Atom performance easy. So, NOW You need performance. And if it can deliver a serious performance boost on that front, even if it just scrapes "Core i3-Y" performance, this is a massive boost. I have an Atom system as my Netflix box, just recently replaced it with a Core 2 Duo old laptop I was given. I ran no benchmarks, but I can tell you a Core 2 Duo laptop CPU, is like 4 to 6 times faster, easy. Just visually. Both system has 4GB of RAM DDR2, same speed, both has an SSD (which was useless on the Atom, as an HDD (yes) is not the bottleneck, it is really the CPU... when you have the HDD wait for the CPU, this is when you know you screwed up).

 

So if it can deliver acceptable performance for x86 apps, mixed with a native web browser for ARM64, then your average consumer will get a great experience.

They can surf the web, play HD videos, multi-task, use their music player of choice, Office and anything corporate in-house software if any. They don't care about games, they don't care about rendering videos, and so on.

[Settlerteo]

You just need to remember/know something. Hardware is nothing without software. So either they need to make it work with Microsofts OSs or they need a software optimized for their architecture, able to deliver perfectly in every workload for the mainstream target group.

[GoodBytes]

5 hours ago, Canada EH said:

Every place now has usb outlets to plug into.

True, but they are often times full (think airport), and many planes still don't have plugs.

[bcredeur97]

it wont deliver what an i5 does with x86 instructions... you're still bottle-necked by the x86 emulation

 

native tasks it should be ok though? But then it's not x86 which is what the i5 uses anyway? How could you compare these two?

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Considering that it is easier to beat multi-core performance by adding more cores.... which is what this CPU is... it has 8 cores (apparently... we will see if they are all 8 cores identical or using slower ones in combination of faster ones, or just switches between a set of dual/quad cores type of system), I doubt it will match Intel's latest and greatest i5 CPU.

It's 4 high performance and 4 low-power cores.

 

Here is everything we know so far:

• It will be 4 high performance cores and 4 low performance cores (both called Kryo 495).
• The demo platform had the high performance cores running at 2.75GHz, but Qualcomm has stated that manufacturers will be able to tweak it.
• The picture they showed on the screen indicates that the low power cores will have less cache than the larger ones.
• The total cache (L1, L2, L3 and system cache) is 10MB.
• The DSP is a Hexagon 690.
• The GPU is an Adreno 680.
• The GPU is said to be twice as fast as the Adreno 630 and 60% more efficient.
• The chip supports up to 8 channels of LPDDR4x.
• It also supports NVMe and UFS 3.0 for storage.
• It has an integrated X24 modem, and supports the external X50 modem.

[Drak3]

40 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

It's 4 high performance and 4 low-power cores.

 

Here is everything we know so far:

• It will be 4 high performance cores and 4 low performance cores (both called Kryo 495).
• The demo platform had the high performance cores running at 2.75GHz, but Qualcomm has stated that manufacturers will be able to tweak it.
• The picture they showed on the screen indicates that the low power cores will have less cache than the larger ones.
• The total cache (L1, L2, L3 and system cache) is 10MB.
• The DSP is a Hexagon 690.
• The GPU is an Adreno 680.
• The GPU is said to be twice as fast as the Adreno 630 and 60% more efficient.
• The chip supports up to 8 channels of LPDDR4x.
• It also supports NVMe and UFS 3.0 for storage.
• It has an integrated X24 modem, and supports the external X50 modem.

It'd make for one hell of an Android tablet. Hope Samsung makes something along that line.

[LAwLz]

18 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

It'd make for one hell of an Android tablet. Hope Samsung makes something along that line.

That would be great, but considering the fact that Samsung used the last gen chip in their high end galaxy tab I seriously doubt they will. 

[GoodBytes]

56 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

It'd make for one hell of an Android tablet. Hope Samsung makes something along that line.

Doubt it. Android tablet don't sale well at all.

[FPSwithaWacomTablet]

9 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

It is literally in its infancy. Nothing uses it and the few things that do are beta testing platforms that cost more than an x86 equivalent. Did I mention that they are all also terrible? 

I guess my perspective is a little bit skewed. When I refer to infancy, I am talking RISC-V kind of infancy. It can barely run desktop Linux.

[Drak3]

27 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Doubt it. Android tablet don't sale well at all.

Either does the trash known as Windows on ARM, but at least Android on ARM is a valid solution for more than diehard fanboys.

[Hunter259]

Can everyone stop saying stupid shit about instruction sets? That doesn't determine how well a chip is going to perform at all. It means literally nothing. Modern x86 processors even convert their more complex instructions down in the pipeline to microOps as it's simply faster to process it. The hardware is the issue about performance.  Nothing else. The only thing that I would imagine would be different is that ARM would have a shorter pipeline but need more cache due to have more instructions to do the same thing. Outside of that it's completely down to design of the chip. Yes. ARM could match x86 if the right chip was made. Currently they don't exist. Stop using instruction set ideology as the be all end all of performance metrics.

 

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It's 4 high performance and 4 low-power cores.

 

Here is everything we know so far:

• It will be 4 high performance cores and 4 low performance cores (both called Kryo 495).
• The demo platform had the high performance cores running at 2.75GHz, but Qualcomm has stated that manufacturers will be able to tweak it.
• The picture they showed on the screen indicates that the low power cores will have less cache than the larger ones.
• The total cache (L1, L2, L3 and system cache) is 10MB.
• The DSP is a Hexagon 690.
• The GPU is an Adreno 680.
• The GPU is said to be twice as fast as the Adreno 630 and 60% more efficient.
• The chip supports up to 8 channels of LPDDR4x.
• It also supports NVMe and UFS 3.0 for storage.
• It has an integrated X24 modem, and supports the external X50 modem.

What exactly is "System Cache"?

[Canada EH]

Just bring along a power bank and you are good to go with battery juice!

[Trixanity]

44 minutes ago, Hunter259 said:

What exactly is "System Cache"?

A cache between the SoC and RAM to reduce the amount of memory transactions. 

 

Should reduce power consumption as well. It increases latency when accessing memory though.

[Hunter259]

2 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

A cache between the SoC and RAM to reduce the amount of memory transactions. 

 

Should reduce power consumption as well. It increases latency when accessing memory though.

Ah. Never heard of it. I'd imagine that would be most of the 10mb of "cache". That would be a massive hamper for some applications.

[bcredeur97]

how does the Adreno 680 compare to Intel UHD 630?

[AlTech]

@GoodBytes Typo in title "announces" instead of "annonces"

[GoodBytes]

7 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

@GoodBytes Typo in title "announces" instead of "annonces"

Oh! Thank you!

 

[edit]

Wait what?

It's: "Announces": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/announce

[yian88]

windows 10 is not fast enough for our processors, have you ever thought of that?

[mynameisjuan]

9 minutes ago, yian88 said:

windows 10 is not fast enough for our processors, have you ever thought of that?

No because that statement makes no sense

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, mynameisjuan said:

No because that statement makes no sense

He's saying Windows is bloated.

 

Which for an OS targetting ARM platforms, it is. That doesn't change the fact that every time we hear about a SD matching a Core CPU, it was blatantly false.

[Johnnyboy84]

I am taking a wait and see approach.

[Valentyn]

On 12/6/2018 at 9:25 PM, Nowak said:

"Core i5 performance"
 

 

Hey now! I'm sure it's giving the i5 750 a run for it's money!

[mr moose]

On 12/7/2018 at 8:50 AM, Arika S said:

Will wait for I dependant review's. But if the claims are accurate, i see a resurgence of thin and light laptops with battery life for days

 

 

Thank you, 4 pages and only a handful of posts like this worth reading. 

 

It's very easy to remain skeptical whilst also being optimistic . The rest of the thread is just negative personal opinions or ideals.   Maybe it's false maybe it's not, maybe windows on ARM will turn out to be the bees knees of mobile computing, those who claim otherwise had better polish their crystal balls, because as slow as this progress seems to be, it certainly isn't going away.  

[LAwLz]

8 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Thank you, 4 pages and only a handful of posts like this worth reading. 

 

It's very easy to remain skeptical whilst also being optimistic . The rest of the thread is just negative personal opinions or ideals.   Maybe it's false maybe it's not, maybe windows on ARM will turn out to be the bees knees of mobile computing, those who claim otherwise had better polish their crystal balls, because as slow as this progress seems to be, it certainly isn't going away.  

Oh come on. Let's be honest here, you looked up the most positive comment for Microsoft and just liked that one because it remained optimistic about something Microsoft is pushing.

 

The fact of the matter is that Microsoft and Qualcomm have made similar claims year after year, and they have failed to live up to the expectations every time. At some point people stop being optimistic and having faith. 

 

 

My posts have some negative personal opinions in them, but those are well explained, and I also use facta and historical evidence. I also asked questions regarding some dubious claims. 

 

 

If AMD came out and said their 680 would match the 2080Ti in performance while using half the power, would you go "yeah... That's too good to be true. I don't believe it." or would you go "oh boy, that sounds great! Can't wait for benchmarks."?