Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 revealed - Exclusive for full Windows 10, not your phone.

[cluelessgenius]

1 hour ago, Princess Cadence said:

 

Imagine yourself in 2020 running a gaming PC powered by Qualcomm CPU and Intel GPU for the lulz.

perfect instructions on how to catch all the driver issues

[matrix07012]

2 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

Brace yourself for the Can it run Crysis jokes... Seriously though it'd be cool have a Qualcomm high end CPU to break some the Intel & AMD paradigm.

 

Imagine yourself in 2020 running a gaming PC powered by Qualcomm CPU and Intel GPU for the lulz.

Can it run Crysis? No, really. I want to know.

[LAwLz]

Starting to get pretty sick and tired of hearing all the "it's finally fast enough!". This is like the 3rd time I hear a new ARM SoC come out with support for Windows 10 and people go "it's fast enough now, promise!".

 

First it was on the Snapdragon 820.

Then it was on the Snapdragon 835.

Now it's on the Snapdragon 850.

 

Even with a 30% performance increase, I still don't think these devices has any reason to exist unless they cost ~300 dollars. The Snapdragon 835 devices were ~800 dollars, and at that point you can get a really good i5 or i7 based laptop. If ARM laptops has a place on the market, it's in the budget category. Like Chromebooks. Not super premium devices like the current gen ARM based Windows laptops.

[Lurick]

I'm curious as to why they have 802.11AD and not 802.11AX?

802.11AD is basically junk and dead as can be at this point.

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, mynameisjuan said:

While I am up for competition, this only makes it worse for the consumers. 

 

Devs have to choose what to develop for up front and, while getting better, its still shit in terms of programming for 2 or more OSes. Now its going to be choose OS and then choose architecture. 

 

I am all for ARM chips for laptops but I worry the app market is going to get worse requiring more and more hardware to get the app you want. 

Not at all. Windows 10 on ARM CPUs is EXACTLY the same as Windows 10 for Intel/AMD CPUs. Same SDK, same APIs, same everything. All they need to do, is pick "ARM64" in their compiler of choice, instead of "x86" or "x86-64". That is all.

 

The only affected developers is game game developers, which, in order to get every drop of performance would need to do deep optimization on their games for the CPU and code their shaders for the limitations of the ARM GPU. The good news is that the GPU is too weak to play anything beside some simple mostly 2D indie titles or simplistic "mobile game graphics".

 

 

[michaelocarroll007]

2 hours ago, Deli said:

A 30% faster Atom CPU is still very underwhelming......Maybe after a few more generations. It'll reach the point becoming "usable".

Or even if they get the emulation Problems better on top of faster Chips performance will Greatly improve

[mynameisjuan]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

Not at all. Windows 10 on ARM CPUs is EXACTLY the same as Windows 10 for Intel/AMD CPUs. Same SDK, same APIs, same everything. All they need to do, is pick "ARM64" in their compiler of choice, instead of "x86" or "x86-64". That is all.

 

The only affected developers is game game developers, which, in order to get every drop of performance would need to do deep optimization on their games for the CPU and code their shaders for the limitations of the ARM GPU. The good news is that the GPU is too weak to play anything beside some simple mostly 2D indie titles or simplistic "mobile game graphics".

 

 

If this is all that is then I am all for it. But there are still going to be devs to lazy to recompile under ARM64.

 

Devs are finally going cross platform as all OS are slowly, very slowly, evening out. I just dont want another hiccup in progress where I have a x86 windows machine for this app, a 64 arm windows machine for another app and a Mac for another app. 

[GoodBytes]

8 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Starting to get pretty sick and tired of hearing all the "it's finally fast enough!". This is like the 3rd time I hear a new ARM SoC come out with support for Windows 10 and people go "it's fast enough now, promise!".

 

First it was on the Snapdragon 820.

Then it was on the Snapdragon 835.

Now it's on the Snapdragon 850.

 

Even with a 30% performance increase, I still don't think these devices has any reason to exist unless they cost ~300 dollars. The Snapdragon 835 devices were ~800 dollars, and at that point you can get a really good i5 or i7 based laptop. If ARM laptops has a place on the market, it's in the budget category. Like Chromebooks. Not super premium devices like the current gen ARM based Windows laptops.

huh? Well people are running Windows 10 on ARM on Raspberry Pie 3 fine, and that is missing all the drivers to get things run properly. Check YouTube.

But aside from that, the Windows 10 on ARM wasn't even close to release with the 820. It was just something that the company was toying with that were showing. The 835 was a soft lunch, but even then, it was plenty fast. You get Core i3 performance, which is real good. Maybe you think a Core i3 is a Celeron or an Atom CPU, or some kind of AMD Sempron. This is far from true. there is a big step compared an i3 to a Atom. All I can think about is that you look at your standard laptop with a core-o3 with a low-ass 5400RPM HDD and think that the CPU is slow while the HDD is what brings down the entire system.

 

The only issue it had is the big gap of performance drop running Win32 x86 apps, which should be alleviated with this new chip. Of course we will wait and see, but while it was close before from delivering a decent experience, now it should. That is why there is excitement. Because the 835 was so close.

[ScratchCat]

@GoodBytes

Mozilla considers ARM a tier 3 platform and hence will prioritise most other platforms above it. The Raspberry Pi has been unable to run any Firefox version later than 54 and the issue is not being looked into. With the much larger userbase of the RPi not being supported Windows will likely not receive any care for some time.

[GoodBytes]

4 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

@GoodBytes

Mozilla considers ARM a tier 3 platform and hence will prioritise most other platforms above it. The Raspberry Pi has been unable to run any Firefox version later than 54 and the issue is not being looked into. With the much larger userbase of the RPi not being supported Windows will likely not receive any care for some time.

The Raspberry Pi 3 doesn't even have graphics drivers to start with, and is missing a number of CPU technology  which more modern Firefox probably uses. Microsoft assumes that your Win32 programs running under Windows 10 on ARM, are on a Snapdragon 835 or, now 850. So, it probably doesn't emulate things that it can pass to the CPU to do.

 

If Firefox doesn't want to support ARM64, than that is fine.  They took ages to make 64-bit support, in the mean time the community made Waterfox which not only was 64-bit but supported added CPU technologies to help boost performance that Firefox didn't. The community did a good job at keeping the version up to date, not to mention stable as well. I expect the same.

[kokakolia]

It would be interesting to see how this stacks up to my ~$250 refurbished Dell E7440 with a core i5 4300u. The battery life isn’t great (~3h) but everything else is awesome. 

[I-r0k]

7 hours ago, Starelementpoke said:

Neat, but how much will it hurt my wallet?

Im thinking like 150 for the chip, maybe more. 

[Nowak]

That's cool. Can't wait to see how badly Microsoft screws it up.

 

Also, this begs the question. Who, exactly, is Windows on ARM for? Especially since you can get much better performance and still pretty good battery life out of a regular Core i5/i7 or Ryzen 5/7-U laptop.

[GoodBytes]

2 minutes ago, NowakVulpix said:

That's cool. Can't wait to see how badly Microsoft screws it up.

 

Also, this begs the question. Who, exactly, is Windows on ARM for? Especially since you can get much better performance and still pretty good battery life out of a regular Core i5/i7 or Ryzen 5/7-U laptop.

You have a nice and responsive experience for all days battery life, and not 5-7h which you have from a typical Core i3, i5 U series system.

Also, technically a cheaper system as well, as Qualcomm doesn't take you to the cleaners when you buy their CPU compared to Intel.

[Nowak]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

You have a nice and responsive experience for all days battery life, and not 5-7h which you have from a typical Core i3, i5 U series system.

Also, technically a cheaper system as well, as Qualcomm doesn't take you to the cleaners when you buy their CPU compared to Intel.

$600 - $800, or even $1000, isn't "cheaper". I can just get a regular x86 laptop for that money and get better performance than a Celeron with it.

[suicidalfranco]

 

>looks at devices released with SD835

 

>laughs in x86

[PocketNerd]

Are we seeing the start of the slow death of x86?

[GoodBytes]

9 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

Are we seeing the start of the slow death of x86?

Doubt it.

If any anything x86 would be for professionals, gamers only and select server applications.  ARM would be for the average consumer, and select server applications.

[Blademaster91]

27 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

 

>looks at devices released with SD835

Spoiler

 

>laughs in x86

>Completely ignores that it has about 2x the battery life of most cheap i3 laptops.

31 minutes ago, NowakVulpix said:

$600 - $800, or even $1000, isn't "cheaper". I can just get a regular x86 laptop for that money and get better performance than a Celeron with it.

We don't even know how the performance is and people are assuming the performance sucks because PUBG probably won't on it. If these are as fast as an i3 it will be enough for most that also want a whole day on the battery.

[GoodBytes]

 

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

>Completely ignores that it has about 2x the battery life of most cheap i3 laptops.

To add: And has LTE connectivity modem, while Intel doesn't, and is fanless, while Intel CPUs needs a fan to contentiously deliver performance, unless you get a more expensive device with a beefier cooling solution, and just do small burst of loads with large intervals.

[Drak3]

20 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

Are we seeing the start of the slow death of x86?

Nope.

 

44 minutes ago, NowakVulpix said:

Who, exactly, is Windows on ARM for?

Idiots.

 

41 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Qualcomm doesn't take you to the cleaners when you buy their CPU compared to Intel

Yes, they do. Except Qualcomm offers NOTHING to warrant the price for any form factor other than phones and small tablets.

[GoodBytes]

3 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Idiots.

Or you know, convertible phones, and tablets.. especially tablets where you have no choice beside the Apple iPad, if you want a tablet.

 

[Nowak]

3 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Or you know, convertible phones, and tablets.. especially tablets where you have no choice beside the Apple iPad, if you want a tablet.

ChromeOS tablets are coming. But, like... who's rushing out to the store to pick up the latest tablets these days? People would just rather get phones with bigger screens. The tablet market is becoming increasingly redundant.

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Or you know, convertible phones, and tablets.. especially tablets where you have no choice of Apple iPads if you want one.

 

The market has repeatedly decided they don't want Windows based ARM devices, especially phones. They also don't want low end Windows tablets.

 

And that is exactly what the 850 equipped Windows tablets will be, another low end piece of shit, but with the price tags of flagships.

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

huh? Well people are running Windows 10 on ARM on Raspberry Pie 3 fine, and that is missing all the drivers to get things run properly. Check YouTube.

But aside from that, the Windows 10 on ARM wasn't even close to release with the 820. It was just something that the company was toying with that were showing. The 835 was a soft lunch, but even then, it was plenty fast. You get Core i3 performance, which is real good. Maybe you think a Core i3 is a Celeron or an Atom CPU, or some kind of AMD Sempron. This is far from true. there is a big step compared an i3 to a Atom. All I can think about is that you look at your standard laptop with a core-o3 with a low-ass 5400RPM HDD and think that the CPU is slow while the HDD is what brings down the entire system.

 

The only issue it had is the big gap of performance drop running Win32 x86 apps, which should be alleviated with this new chip. Of course we will wait and see, but while it was close before from delivering a decent experience, now it should. That is why there is excitement. Because the 835 was so close.

You keep saying it performs like an i3, but I have so far not seen any proof of this.