The Snapdragon 8cx Benchmarked: A Worthy Challenger?

[Results45]

Today we pit the Snapdragon 8cx against the Core i5-8250U. This is how the 8cx hold's up:

Benchmarked configurations:

• Unnamed competitor laptop.
  • Intel Core i5-8250U
  • 8GB RAM
  • 256GB NVMe Storage
  • 2K resolution display (2048×1080)
  • 49Whr battery
  • Windows 10 OS version: 1809
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx reference laptop.
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx (same as the rumored "Snapdragon 1000"?)
  • 8GB RAM
  • 256GB NVMe storage
  • FHD resolution display (1920×1080)
  • 49Whr battery
  • Windows 10 OS version: 1903

 

Some in-house footage of the benchmarking:

Spoiler

Unity Engine, running natively on ARM

.

 

Okay, so it's theoretically as good as an 8th Gen Core i5 but do apps actually run well on it?

 

Well here we have some browsing, Office Suite, and light gaming/Photoshop (PUBG on the Snapdragon 850):

 

Reviewers mention that Snapdragon laptops sells it in I/O, battery life and solid on-the-go productivity, but here's the caveat: most Windows games will be unplayable unless the 8CX's Adreno 680 GPU proves to double the performance of the Snapdragon 850 and app-support will be limited to "native" Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and "non-native" emulated x86/32-bit apps, which might feel kinda slow until they are optimized as UWP apps or re-compiled for ARM64.

 

Sources, Benchmark analysis, more hands-on footage, and Snapdragon 850 device reviews:

Spoiler

Qualcomm Keynote @ Computex 2019:

 

 

Benchmark coverage:

• https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-8cx-battery-life-performance-benchmarks-windows-10/
• https://www.techspot.com/news/80254-qualcomm-pits-snapdragon-8cx-against-intel-i5-8250u.html
• https://www.ubergizmo.com/2019/05/project-limitless-lenovo-qualcomm/
• https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-snapdragon-8cx-performance-benchmarks,39443.html
• https://hothardware.com/news/qualcomm-snapdragon-8cx-intel-core-i5-pcmark-benchmark
• https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/snapdrago-8cx-vs-core-i5/
• https://www.windowscentral.com/snapdragon-8cx-benchmarks
• https://www.androidauthority.com/qualcomm-8cx-benchmarked-990890/
• https://techgage.com/article/a-performance-preview-of-qualcomms-snapdragon-8cx/
• https://www.pcworld.com/article/3397783/qualcomm-snapdragon-8cx-benchmarks-vs-core-i5.html

 

Hands-on footage and reviews:

Snapdragon 8cx Reference Laptop:

• https://www.anandtech.com/show/14420/handson-with-industrys-first-5g-laptop-a-lenovo-with-qualcomms-8cx-and-x55

 

Lenovo Yoga C630 (SD850):

• https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/lenovo-yoga-c630
• https://www.windowscentral.com/lenovo-yoga-c630-review
• https://www.digitaltrends.com/laptop-reviews/lenovo-yoga-c630-review/

 

Galaxy Book 2 (SD 850):

• https://www.neowin.net/news/samsung-galaxy-book2-review-windows-on-arm-gets-a-lot-better/
• https://pocketnow.com/samsung-galaxy-book-2-review
• https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/samsung-galaxy-book-2
• https://www.windowscentral.com/samsung-galaxy-book2-review
• https://www.digitaltrends.com/laptop-reviews/samsung-galaxy-book-2-review/
• https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/26/18024696/samsung-galaxy-book-2-tablet-laptop-review-specs-price-features
• https://www.pcworld.com/article/3323059/samsung-galaxy-book-2-tablet-hands-on-performance-takes-a-backseat-to-battery-life.html?page=3

 

State of windows app support and performance compared to Intel (Snapdragon 835)

• https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/16/18098230/microsoft-windows-on-arm-64-bit-app-support-arm64

 

Other Sources:

• https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/124967/intel-core-i5-8250u-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html
• https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-8cx-compute-platform
• https://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/always-connected-pc

.

 

Personally, I'm not sure I would buy these until they prove to run enough non-UWP apps and run them at least as smoothly as a Core i3 or Core Y-series processor.

 

What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

[dizmo]

So they benchmarked them and didn't bother to even use the same version of Windows? Seems legit.

 

 

/s

[Taf the Ghost]

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/124967/intel-core-i5-8250u-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html

 

The specific Intel CPU. Considering how weak the GPUs are considered in modern Intel parts, this is interesting, I suppose, but it's still not native x86 and that'll always be the issue. 

[Jurrunio]

Still see it as ARM processors trying to do stuff they aren't good for.

[Arika]

until ARM on windows works as well as x86 they are always going to fall behind regardless of the benchmark numbers

[Zodiark1593]

27 minutes ago, Arika S said:

until ARM on windows works as well as x86 they are always going to fall behind regardless of the benchmark numbers

This is a rather high bar considering the overhead of emulation. It will be a quite impressive feat if the Snapdragon can even get halfway to Core i3 performance with x86 emulation.

[williamcll]

Would be a nice high end pi top.

[captain_to_fire]

@GoodBytes If a developer compiled a x86 application to ARM64, does it mean it can run natively on a Snapdragon 8cx device with true Windows 10? 

[GoodBytes]

3 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

@GoodBytes If a developer compiled a x86 application to ARM64, does it mean it can run natively on a Snapdragon 8cx device with true Windows 10? 

Yup!

The ARM version of Windows 10 is identical in experience as the one you are enjoying now.

You can get apps from anywhere from the web (if you want an example: VLC for Windows 10 on ARM can be downloaded from their official website), no special treatment needs to be done to the app either (no special framework to implement). The developer just compiles for ARM (which Visual Studio 2019 support out of the box), and you are good to go.

[Drak3]

Cool, can't wait for it to match a mid end Sandy Bridge i3 in the real world.

[The King of the Undead]

4 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

*The battle between the CPU titans Intel and AMD raging in the background, hurling monster 8+ core CPUs at each other*

 

Qualcomm: "I wana join the battle! I can uh, match a 15W, 3.4Ghz Quad core"

now when will nvidia?

[rcmaehl]

5 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

*The battle between the CPU titans Intel and AMD raging in the background, hurling monster 8+ core CPUs at each other*

 

Qualcomm: "I wana join the battle! I can uh, match a 15W, 3.4Ghz Quad core"

On that note:
 

*The battle between GPU Titans Nvidia and AMD raging in the background, hurling monster $700 GPUs at each other*

Intel: "I wana join the battle! I can uh, match a 20W DDR4 GT1030"

[NunoLava1998]

8 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

This is a rather high bar considering the overhead of emulation. It will be a quite impressive feat if the Snapdragon can even get halfway to Core i3 performance with x86 emulation.

but this has x86 emulation... windows 10 arm emulates x86 apps

[Den15]

9 hours ago, Results45 said:

What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

Told you back in the other post but I'll say it again:

 

Don't know everyone else's thoughts but mine is IM SOLD AND ALL ABOARD THE HYPETRAIN1!!1 CHOO CHOO

 

I'm learning to code (college program[it works very differently than in USA but it's a college degree]), and I intend to go for web developing, that means I don't need a whole lot of computing power (as I said before I got a chromebook for all the portability and battery life, plus I just need chrome and a text editor), I don't game (I have an almost 2 yo daughter which I intend to spend most of my free time with), I don't intend doing any video editing.

 

I'm basically their target audience... plus I'd love to make some linux ARM native software if I ever get the chance...

[yian88]

Total garbage, only windows and UWP apps is a disaster, windows is a disaster for mobile.

It doesnt matter what CPU you have, until you put a proper OS in there like android is going to run like shit.

Who the fuck uses antivirus performance destroyer in 2019? oh yeah fucking windows.

I see this as being very pointless, the entire MS Store is ultra trash, no one is going to use that. And win32 will run bad in emulation cant beat x86 optimized apps, some might not run at all or have abysmal performance.

 

Windows era is finished, we need mobile optimized cpu, platform, OS and pheriperals.

Mouse is way too inconvenient, why arent they pushing Tablets with Stylus pen and profesional grade apps? ill take 10-12" tablet with 7-8000 mah battery, SD 855 or 8cx, with a stylus pen and mini keyboard ANY day over a fucking windows laptop wtf (which i have right now and its absolute horseshit, 1000$+ laptop can wipe my ass with it runs like shit, a 400$ android tablet is 10x better), they just dont have the required professional app support, and google has its head in its ass, cant see the massive opportunity here, they abandoned tablets and now we have no decent alternative to garbage windows and uwp. Dont even get me started on the trash linux desktop platform.

 

[GoodBytes]

15 hours ago, Results45 said:

What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

I am personally very excited. We need a new player in the PC space, and Qualcomm has been doing massive strives at each iteration of their CPUs which targets the laptop market. While I do expect the current Snapdragon powered system to be on the expensive side more than Chromebook pricing, it won't take long before the mid range chip will match the performance of this chip and be price competitive to Chromebooks.

 

Aside from this, it seems that there is developer interest. Considering that the ARM based device is very rare, and OEMs making very limited quantities of Qualcomm powered CPUs devices, the following are official programs coming (with beta/test version available) or officially released as we speak:

• Firefox (reached testing phase)
• Chrome (in the works)
• Chromium Edge (in the works)
• 7Zip
• VLC
• PuTTY
• Python
• Netflix and all native UWP programs (if I am not mistaken)

Honestly, I expected 0 support. Especially, for the fact that buying ARM based Windows machine was expensive, very expensive, and actually very difficult, due to the limited production run (which didn't help lowering the price) by OEMs that were mostly doing this for proof of concept/tapping their toes on the water. Dev obviously needs the system to test their compiled software, and debug it on it if they are any issues. So, there is interest. 

 

We need competition in the PC space, Intel is massive and it will need more than AMD to actually genuinely scratch Intel and actually have fierce competition as we used to have back in the old days of computers. If you think about app support, having Chrome/Firefox/Chromium Edge, Office, some music player like Spotify, I think that covers most use cases of a PC for many typical users and office warriors. And that excludes Win32 translation support that they can use just in case. Such user may not gain much on price system powered by this chip, especially if they seek a quality  device with a good keyboard, trackpad and screen, but they will gain things that Intel is having a very diffciult time delivering:

• Massive battery life
• LTE/5G support
• Lighter/smaller system
• Instant wake up (like your phone). Connected Standby from Intel+MS didn't pan out to match a mobile phone experience in waking up a phone from sleep.

 

If Qualcomm is able to kick start things with this chip, I think we will see more developer interest, with a a growing list of native ARM64 programs for Windows 10 on ARM, making such system even more appealing to a number of user.

[GoodBytes]

6 minutes ago, Johners said:

I'd be interested to see Microsoft, and other OEMs for Windows devices, start to utilise these SoCs for budget systems while retaining the use of x86-64 for higher end systems (regardless of using an AMD or Intel chip). The Surface Go is the perfect candidate for this kind of chip instead of an Intel Atom as you could have better performance and battery life in the same form factor while keeping the price down. The Surface Pro would then retain an x86-64 CPU for a higher performance and larger form factor device.

Surface Go has a Pentium Gold CPU which is not Atom (Pentium Silver).

But I think that Microsoft has its eyes on this chip for the Surface Go 2. Considering that leaks suggests that Microsoft was honestly considering a Qualcomm chip, would suggest that they probably decided to wait for Qualcomm first genuine laptop focus chip to deliver a great experience to its users.

[JoeCoke]

I could see myself wanting one if battery life truly is good, the CPU performance looks fine considering I still find Core 2 Quads fine. And I don't game beyond emulators on my laptop anyway, if it can run netplay Melee, I'm set.

[SansVarnic]

2 hours ago, yian88 said:

<snip>

 

Half of what you said makes no sense and the rest is option and rhetoric.

I would suggest taking it down a notch or two.

[yian88]

40 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

Half of what you said makes no sense and the rest is option and rhetoric.

I would suggest taking it down a notch or two.

You know what you're right i will simplify.

Windows sucks for mobile, why would they build ARM cpu's for it?

[Dabombinable]

5 hours ago, yian88 said:

Total garbage, only windows and UWP apps is a disaster, windows is a disaster for mobile.

It doesnt matter what CPU you have, until you put a proper OS in there like android is going to run like shit.

Who the fuck uses antivirus performance destroyer in 2019? oh yeah fucking windows.

I see this as being very pointless, the entire MS Store is ultra trash, no one is going to use that. And win32 will run bad in emulation cant beat x86 optimized apps, some might not run at all or have abysmal performance.

 

Windows era is finished, we need mobile optimized cpu, platform, OS and pheriperals.

Mouse is way too inconvenient, why arent they pushing Tablets with Stylus pen and profesional grade apps? ill take 10-12" tablet with 7-8000 mah battery, SD 855 or 8cx, with a stylus pen and mini keyboard ANY day over a fucking windows laptop wtf (which i have right now and its absolute horseshit, 1000$+ laptop can wipe my ass with it runs like shit, a 400$ android tablet is 10x better), they just dont have the required professional app support, and google has its head in its ass, cant see the massive opportunity here, they abandoned tablets and now we have no decent alternative to garbage windows and uwp. Dont even get me started on the trash linux desktop platform.

 

If you'd used Windows 8.1RT on a Surface with a Tegra 3, then used Android 7.1.1 on an Asus Transformer Infinity, you would't think that it's a disaster. RT ran far better, despite running on a lower clocked CPU.

[Results45]

8 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

@GoodBytes If a developer compiled a x86 application to ARM64, does it mean it can run natively on a Snapdragon 8cx device with true Windows 10? 

 

As someone mentioned earlier, yes, a Snapdragon can emulate any 32-bit x86 app. It just won't be optimized (and the right drivers & APIs need to be supported). Tim Schiesser from HardwareUnboxed/TechSpot explains this pretty well:

 

Better yet, most of the work developers need to get their x86 and x64 apps optimized for ARM64 is just simply following these re-compiling instructions from Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/develop/building-arm64-drivers

 

Spoiler

.

• https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/11/15/official-support-for-windows-10-on-arm-development/
• https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/155961/clarifying-microsofts-plans-64-bit-apps-windows-10-arm

.

 

And yes, full fat Windows 10 Home and Pro runs natively on ARM:

 

4 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

On that note:
 

*The battle between GPU Titans Nvidia and AMD raging in the background, hurling monster $700 GPUs at each other*

Intel: "I wana join the battle! I can uh, match a 20W DDR4 GT1030"

 

I know this was part of Intel's April Fools GPU "leak", but my dad (who works at Intel) says 2-4 tile GPUs linked via EMIB or an Intel-equivalent of Infinity Fabric is not entirely impossible:

 

 

So if each "tile" performs at least as good as the Iris Pro 580 GPU (1,152 GFLOPs) then 4 of them together* might be equivalent** to a RX 570!

 

 

*1152 x 4 = 4,608 GFLOPS (4.6 TFLOPS)

**actual performance could range anywhere from an GTX 1650/Vega M GH/RX 470 to a GTX 1060 3GB/RX 570 (2,984-5,095 GFLOPS)

[Heesleemer]

I think most people here are missing the point. It's not necessarily being a powerhouse. Battery life and being functional (and probably cheaper later on) for every day users... which is an internet browser, microsoft office suite/google suite. 

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, Heesleemer said:

I think most people here are missing the point. It's not necessarily being a powerhouse. Battery life and being functional (and probably cheaper later on) for every day users... which is an internet browser, microsoft office suite/google suite. 

We had that in the past with the ARM Surface lineup...and look at how that turned out. Android is still dominant (even though it  ran worse than 8/8.1RT on equivalent hardware) and Microsoft is once again doing another fresh attempt at breaking into the ARM device market.

[Nowak]

Comparing a 2 year old Intel CPU to a brand new ARM CPU on different versions of Windows 10, in Microsoft Office and Edge.

 

ok