Qualcomm’s latest chip for mid-range smartphones places an emphasis on gaming. The company says the Snapdragon 675 launches games 30 percent more quickly and offer higher frame rates while playing them.
Theoretically the chip could even power phones with 120 Hz screens… although it’s unclear if phone makers are going to want to release phones with mid-range chips and high screen refresh rates (the only phones to date with 120 Hz displays are high-end models like the Razer Phone and Razer Phone 2)..
While the company isn’t saying much about the graphics technology in the Snapdragon 675 processor, we do know that at least some of the improvements are due to a new CPU core design.
The Snapdragon 670 processor that was introduced a few months ago featured eight Kryo 360 CPU cores. The new Snapdragon 675 chip features eight Kryo 460/Cortx-A76 CPU cores:
- 2 x 2 GHz Kryo 460 performance cores w/256KB cache
- 6 x 1.8 GHz Kryo 460 efficiency cores w/64KB cache
According to AnandTech, the performance cores are based on ARM Cortex-A76 technology, while the efficiency cores are based on Cortex-A55 designs.
Other features include a Qualcomm Snapdragon X12 LTE modem, a Spectra 250 ISP with support for triple-camera systems, and support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ fast charging.
The chip maker is also promising a 50 percent improvement in AI applications, 35 percent faster web browsing, and support for camera features including bokeh/portrait mode shots, extended slow-motion shots, and 3D face unlock.
We should start to see new devices powered by Snapdragon 675 processors early next year.
And there will be a total of 5 phones with this chip by 2020.
I wonder how the GPU compares to say the Snapdragon 820.
It will be lower.
The Early 820’s (S7 and Mi5) were downclocked versions, and they still match QSD 710 devices on the benchmark front when it comes to the CPU and GPU. Not to mention the latter QSD 820 devices, and the overclocked QSD 821 devices (eg OnePlus 3t).
This Adreno 612 is just a rebranded Adreno 512, you find that on the QSD 660 which performs lower than the QSD 710.
Overall Qualcomm’s lineup is a little muddy. But in my somewhat professional opinion, I would line them up as such:
(worst) QSD 636, QSD 670, QSD 660, QSD 675, QSD 710, QSD 835, QSD 845 (best)
You want a good balance of Single-Core performance, Low battery drain, GPU performance, and Total/Multi-thread performance. And usually you get more gains from the architecture (ie A72, A73, A75, A76) than lithography gains (16nm, 14nm, 12nm, 10nm). While on the topic, AndroidOS is still immature enough to benefit greater from frequency increases than cache increases.
I’m mostly impressed by QSD 636 in US$150(or cheaper) devices, and the QSD 710 in US$300(or cheaper) devices. The other in-between chips are nor here nor there. But at this point, I would expect even the ageing QSD 835 to compete against the inferior QSD 710 in the same price segment though this hasn’t transpired. Although we are seeing the QSD 845 for US$310 in the Poco F1 which is certainly impressive value.
How do these benchmark against older, higher end Snapdragons? Like an 810 or an 820, for example? It would be interesting to see how far the midrange Snapdragons are behind the 8xx chips in gaming performance.
Forget the QSD 810, that was a flawed design.
Almost every iteration was throttling heavily, I think only the OnePlus 2 after its first patch didn’t and that was due to underclocking. Still the performance varied somewhere slightly below the old QSD 800 and slightly above the QSD 805….basically a sidegrade chip for anyone from 2013/2014.
As for the QSD 820 and 821… it trades blows with the QSD 710, though I would still give an edge to the old 820’s. But if I had to pick I would actually take a QSD 710, and that’s because they offer a noticeably longer battery life on top of it.
So we’ve been making progress, but definitely not as much as we were making during 2008-2014 era. One may say that after 2016 we hit a plateau, where, Apple has not.