The mobile processor manufacturing companies are in a cold war and I talked about this many times before. The main players here are Nvidia and Qualcomm. Last year it was about Tegra 3 vs Snapdragon S4 Pro. Now it’s about Tegra 4 vs Snapdragon 600. Current winner is Tragra 4, but for how long?
We are just few months away to witness the mighty Snapdragon 800 processor. By next month it will start the mass production and by end of 2013 it will come to market wrapped up in many Smartphone and Tablets. Yeah, it will take the crown away from Nvidia Tegra 4 for sure and lots more. Let’s take a look.
Inside Snapdragon 800
Snapdragon 800 chip is going to come with many brand new technologies and components.
CPU: Up to 2.3 GHz // Quad Core // Krait 400
GPU: Adreno 330
RAM: Up to 4 GB // LPDDR3 (12.8 GB/s)
We have already seen LPDDR3 RAM up to 2 GB. But we are going to see 2.3 GHz clock speed for the first time on brand new Krait 400 architecture. Adrino 330 GPU is expected to have 50% better graphic performance than Adreno 320. No further explanation needed. This is going to be THE beast of SoC.
Benchmark Prediction
We have already seen benchmark results of Snapdragon 600 in HTC One.
Snapdragon 600
Quadrant: ~12500
An Tu Tu: ~24600
GL Benchmark (Egypt HD, Off-screen, 1080p): 34 fps
Expected benchmark in Snapdragon 800
Overall performance of Snapdragon 800 is expected to be 50% higher. Based on that, we can predict benchmark results as below.
Quadrant: ~18500
An Tu Tu: ~35000
GL Benchmark (Egypt HD, Off-screen, 1080p): ~60 fps
Enabling Features
The next question, what is Snapdragon 800 going to do with this power? Qualcomm has some good plan for that as well.
4K Content
4K content was always a dream for mobile devices. With Snapdragon 800 phones and tablets will be able to have 4K displays with 3840 × 2160 px resolution for UHD video playback. Not just that, 4K standard will extend to content creation as well. Mobile devices will be able to handle 4K cameras capable of recording HDR videos, boost photography up to 7 FPS etc.
Gaming
Snapdragon 800 and Adreno 330 GPU that comes with it would be exciting news for gamers. It will be powerful than Apple iPad 4 and even Nvidia Tegra 4’s 72 core GPU. 1080p @ 60 FPS gaming would be a great experience on a mobile device. We are talking about console quality graphic in a mobile device. This might replace TV consoles down the time.
Android Operations
I was talking about Android Lag before. Due to the architectural issues Android need more hardware power to be as smooth as iOS. But with this level of processors there won’t be any measurable Android lag. Overall OS operations, UI transitions and touch responsiveness would be smooth like never before.
Finally
Still we don’t know the first device to come out with Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. Some rumors say that it’s going to be Nexus 5 manufactured by LG. It’s expected to hit the market by the end of year 2013.
I think the best utilization of Snapdragon 800 would be in a Tablet. Maybe we will be able to witness such in next generation of full size Nexus tablets.
I’m keeping my eyes open for update. Stay in touch.
Tags: #Qualcomm #Smartphone #Tablet