Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 performance preview is out

[Trixanity]

It seems like the Kryo cores will be competitive but not mind-blowingly so. They used a smartphone platform to showcase performance instead of the usual tablets. I guess they wanted to reinforce the idea that these cores won't overheat.
 

To that end, then, Snapdragon 820 looks like Qualcomm has regained their orientation. Performance is improved over 810 – usually greatly so – at both the CPU and GPU level. And for what it’s worth, while we don’t have extensive temperature/clockspeed logs from the MDP/S, at no point did the device get hot to the touch or leave us with the impression that it was heavily throttling to avoid getting hot to the touch. Power consumption and especially efficiency (Performance/W) is clearly going to be important consideration on 820 after everyone’s experiences with 810, and while we’ll have to see what the retail devices are like, after what Samsung was able to do in their own transition from 20nm to 14nm FinFET, I feel it bodes well for Qualcomm as well.

 
They've especially improved single core performance by a lot, but multithreaded work loads suffer due to the fact that they've moved from 4 + 4 clusters to 2 + 2.
These are of course very early numbers without final optimizations, drivers and compilers. It's generally preferably to get high single threaded performance, especially when looking at Apple and their consistent use of dual core implementations where their performance is excellent, even compared to quad, hexa and octa core processors.
 

Meanwhile looking at Geekbench 3 memory performance, one can see that memory bandwidth is greatly improved over both Snapdragon 800/801 and 810. Stream copy in particular is through the roof, increasing by 131% (over double 810’s performance). Even the other tests, though not as great, are between 55% and 103%. The Snapdragon 820 show to have much improved latency (About half as much) to main memory when compared to the Snapdragon 810, so it seems that Qualcomm made definite improvements in the memory controller and general memory architecture of the chipset, allowing the CPUs to get nearer to the theoretical total memory bandwidth offered by the memory controllers.

 

Even though this early preview means we don’t have the luxury of building a binary with a compiler aware of Kryo, using our A57 binaries produces some preliminary results on the 820 MDP/S. Performance does regress in a couple of places – but in other places we see performance increases by up to 52%. 820 does have a slight 10%
frequency advantage over 810, so when taking into account the clock difference the IPC improvements are slightly lower. This is also showcased when comparing the Snapdragon 820 to a more similarly clocked Exynos 7420 (A57 @ 2100MHz), where the maximum advantage drops to 33% and similarly to a clock-normalized Snapdragon 810, the overall average comes in at only 5-6%. Once we get the opportunity to have more time with a Snapdragon 820 device we'll be able to verify how much the compiler settings affect the score on the Kryo architecture.

 
 

The actual integer performance gains with GeekBench 3 are rather varied. Single-threaded results consistently show gains, ranging from a minor -5% regression for AES up to a 61% improvement for SHA2. Given the architecture shift involved here, this is a bit surprising (and in Qualcomm’s favor) since you wouldn’t necessarily expect Kryo to beat Cortex-A57 on everything. On the other hand MT results typically show a regression, since Snapdragon 810 had a 4+4 big.LITTLE configuration that meant that it had the 4 Cortex-A53 cores contributing to the task, along with the big cores all running at their near-full clockspeed, while Kryo’s second cluster runs at a reduced clockrate. And though one could have a spirited argument about whether single-threaded or multi-threaded performance is more important, I’m firmly on the side of ST for most use cases.

 
Moving onto GPU performance. The GPU seems to even stomp the A9. 
The 3DMark tests seemed to be CPU limited on the 820. Not sure if that means the Kryo cores are weaker than they should be or if the Adreno 530 is just that powerful.
The Adreno 530 basically wreaks everything in off-screen tests and still beats 810 powered devices in 1440p vs 1080p on-screen tests.

GFXBench on the other hand shows some massive gains for the 820 relative to any other Android device. In offscreen rendering mode, all 3 game tests – Manhattan ES 3.1, Manhattan ES 3.0, and T-Rex HD – put the 820 MDP/S as being 52% (or more) faster than the next-fastest Android device, either the 810 based Mi Note Pro or the Exynos 7420 based Samsung Galaxy Note 5. The single biggest jump we see is with Manhattan ES 3.0 at 72%, while the ES 3.1 version dials that back down to 52%. Even the iPhone 6s Plus, well known for its powerful GPU, is handily and consistently surpassed by the 820 here. Only due to the 6s Plus’s lower resolution of 1920x1080 does it surpass the MDP/S in onscreen tests, as the latter needs to render at 2560x1600 (~2x the pixels). Qualcomm was aiming for some big GPU performance gains here and so far they are delivering.

 
It will be an interesting battle between Snapdragon 820, Exynos 8890, A9 and Cortex A-72 in 2016.
Especially because we can expect Sony, LG, HTC and many other smartphone manufacturers moving to 820, while some of the Chinese use A-72 like Huawei and Samsung is rumored to be splitting up the SoCs used based on the market, so we can expect to see both Exynos and Qualcomm variants.
 
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9837/snapdragon-820-preview

[FakezZ]

The 820 is what the 810 should have been imho. Why not just wait to get their custom cores ready? Did they really have to jump on the 64-bit bandwagon so fast?

[patrick3027]

This looks so damn ugly on the night theme, please use the standard font and background color ...

[captain cactus]

The GPU seems to even stomp the A9. 

 

Wow. A newer technology is beating an older technology that's been out for over 4 months and finalized for even longer? *amazed*

[Trixanity]

This looks so damn ugly on the night theme, please use the standard font and background color ...

I did not alter any of the settings, so if it looks off, then the default are at fault. I'll look into it later when I'm not typing from a phone

Edit: perhaps the copy paste of the quotes ruined settings. I'll fix it up later when possible.

[Trixanity]

Wow. A newer technology is beating an older technology that's been out for over 4 months and finalized for even longer? *amazed*

Well, everyone views the A9 and the design as the Holy grail of SoC design. And plenty of other SoCs, particularly on the GPU side have been quite lacking. Apple is one of the few putting a lot of emphasis on graphical horsepower, eg MacBooks having Iris graphics whereas most Windows laptops sporting the standard fare of 24 EUs or less.

So that's why I'm pleasantly surprised Qualcomm managed to put something on the table that can beat Apple. It will also be interesting to see what Samsung can do with the rumored 12 core Mali implementation.

Also, different release cycles and both are designs that have been in the making for a long time - and same process node also. So I don't necessarily think it's a given that a newer release that are only months apart in release should be faster or even significantly faster in some aspects.

[farhanorakzai]

Wow, it's still weaker at Cpu performance than the a9. When will qualcomm get it right? More cores =/= more performance. Why not just make a powerful dual core?

[suicidalfranco]

Wow. A newer technology is beating an older technology that's been out for over 4 months and finalized for even longer? *amazed*

same can be said when people compare the A9 to the 808 and 810

[Trixanity]

Now the fonts are fixed for night theme. Apparently, the pasting I did from Anandtech added some hidden code that changed the background and then when enabling the code view, it decided to split some of the quotes in half because there was multiple background codes even in a single quote. Jesus.

 

Anyway it's fixed, so now you won't have to view the horrible white highlight.

 

And yeah, I'll agree that the CPU performance isn't as good as one would have expected. Granted, it's a preview without all the bells and whistles of the final product but I don't believe it'll be a night and day kinda thing or perhaps it will in some benchmarks, but far from all. For example, Anandtech noted horrible Chrome optimization (or rather lack there of).

 

So I think what we're going to see is the A9 kicking the pants off the 820 in single thread and we'll see the Exynos 8890 beat it in multi thread. If Samsung beats Qualcomm in single thread as well, then things look a bit bleak for Qualcomm given the time they've spent on Kryo. Then there's the GPU. Will Samsung's Mali 12 core implementation beat the Adreno 530? I think that's still up in the air. I think we've seen Huawei implement a 4 core design in their Kirin 950, but I'm not sure how that GPU scales with 12 cores, so someone else migh be able to extrapolate.

 

The thing is that even if Samsung would also beat the Adreno 530 on the graphics side, we'll still see many of the players in the Android market go with Qualcomm unless Samsung for some reason out of nowhere manages to get design wins with the likes of HTC, Sony etc (if Samsung was so inclined mind you - I think they like their in-house exclusiveness). So even if Qualcomms latest offering proves a failure in performance or perhaps mediocre would be a better term, they'll still get plenty of business.

 

Finally, perhaps their implementation of HSA (or at least some features of HSA) may eventually give them an edge in some work loads. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can give some insight on that.

[Mew]

I guess what many people forgot was that snapdragon 810 had good gpu performance that ended up bottlenecked by the cpu that throttled heavily. It was also a good deal faster than 7420 and A8. With that in mind, 820's strong gpu performance isn't much of a surprise, although at the end of the day, it's strong onscreen performance that matters, and that's where A9 still wins.

[AlTech]

HEre are the specs of the snapdragon 820 and among one of them is 4K60fps on smartphones!

 

It also supports 802.11ad 60GHz wifi as well as faster LTE, more power efficiency, more performance, and higher resolution cameras.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment below!

 

http://anandtech.com/show/9837/snapdragon-820-preview

[skyress3000]

Would rather have a 1080p60 DSLR tbh

[theninja35]

Cool, but at the moment, it's kind of useless.

[ashypanda]

4K60 would cook the sensor on a smartphone as they still can't record 4K30 without overheating.

[AlTech]

4K60 would cook the sensor on a smartphone as they still can't record 4K30 without overheating.

Their internal testing device that they showed to the press was 6.2 inches! Maybe at that size it might not be bad.

[ashypanda]

Their internal testing device that they showed to the press was 6.2 inches! Maybe at that size it might not be bad.

still you may only get 5 minutes of recording, also you have to think of the storage unless it's going to be H.265.

what'd be slightly better is if chipsets focused on low light or slow motion rather than high resolution, which is only going to be uploaded to facebook or instagram.

[AlTech]

still you may only get 5 minutes of recording, also you have to think of the storage unless it's going to be H.265.

what'd be slightly better is if chipsets focused on low light or slow motion rather than high resolution, which is only going to be uploaded to facebook or instagram.

Hey! It features eMMC 5.1. No need to worry about storage!

[ashypanda]

i don't mean just the speed, but the capacity as if phones are still being shipped with 16gb that'll be gone in no time.

[KemoKa]

i don't mean just the speed, but the capacity as if phones are still being shipped with 16gb that'll be gone in no time.

We need embedded M.2 drives in phones now. NOW.

[AlTech]

We need embedded M.2 drives in phones now. NOW.

NO! We need NVMe just like APPLE!

[KemoKa]

NO! We need NVMe just like APPLE!

...Modern M.2 drives do use NVMe.

[ashypanda]

why not, make 128gb NVMe drives standard in all smart devices.

[AlTech]

why not, make 128gb NVMe drives standard in all smart devices.

Money

[Doobeedoo]

Interesting chip design. Would like to see it vs new Exynos though.