Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Benchmarks: A Gamers Favorite

As you might have seen in our previous coverage of Snapdragon Summit, the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 was recently launched, and the specifications looked great. We had a chance to run benchmarks on Qualcomm'due south development phones called MDP (Mobile Development Platform).

MDP devices are meant for general development and are typically not tuned for maximum performance. However, they expect and feel similar your typical loftier-finish smartphone, so they provide an excellent consumer-level performance overview.

We've added the Galaxy S21 Ultra every bit a proxy for Snapdragon 888, and keep in mind that Snapdragon 888+ is just a bit faster. The Galaxy S20 Ultra volition represent the Snapdragon 865 class of phones then that you lot tin run across the Snapdragon Evolution over time. Nosotros'll go equally far back as Snapdragon 855 in the form of the Galaxy S10+.

Equally usual, we'll start looking at CPU (Geekbench) and GPU (GFXbench) performance as most consumers are most familiar with them.

Some benchmarks, such as PCMark for Android, typically don't push button functioning limits but could be a good proxy if you lot aren't a "power user." I tin can tell you right away that this new Snapdragon performs very similarly to Snapdragon 888 in mundane tasks represented in PCMark.

The Geekbench CPU benchmark shows an ~12% operation gain over Snapdragon 888 in single and multithread tests. This test oft represents apps that crave sustained multi-core CPU usage, such as some video editors. However, more and more of these apps now rely on the GPU or AI processor for such tasks.

Browser-based benchmarks should yield results close to what Geekbench shows every bit they are also a proxy for CPU/memory performance.

The iPhone's A15 Bionic does well and continues to dominate Geekbench, which is inside what we expected based on the theoretical numbers. Apple tree'south overall SoC efforts take been null short of spectacular, but Qualcomm the next benchmarks evidence why Qualcomm is and then competitive.

"SERIOUS GRAPHICS PERFORMANCE DISCOUNTINUITY"

The GFXBench graphics test scores show how robust the new graphics architecture of Snapdragon eight Gen 1 is. Qualcomm has seemingly changed a lot of things just kept a close hat on details. That said, the outcome is +50%, +lx%, or even +70% increase in observed graphics operation. The data shows a serious graphics performance discountinuity.

Games and VR applications are the master beneficiaries of such speed-upwardly. All the same, even if you don't intendance much about college framerates, you could cap the FPs to 30 and win big in power efficiency, and therefore battery life. That's a large win for adventure or plough-by-plow 3D games

AR/XR applications will as well do good, then would any apps that utilise the GPU intensely similar video compression, GPU physics, etc.

"Mixed" or "overall system" benchmarks should show progress in the social club of 30-35% (over Snapdragon 888). It'southward just because they use a weighted average of the CPU+GPU performance (+storage sometimes). I think it's more interesting to see the individual pieces to understand where the changes come from.

From what I've seen during the benchmarking session, the AI performance heave in AITutu is as loftier as +150%. AI functioning is not yet relatable to consumers because AI is traditionally a "spot usage" (spikes here and in that location) rather than sustained usage.

"+150% IN AI Performance"

Notwithstanding, AI inclusion in all kinds of apps is climbing steadily, so it's essential to spotter these numbers. The rising of AI in video recording is my principal reason for being excited about such a drastic performance increment.

So far, these numbers would advise that Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 could maintain Qualcomm's position as the top Android SoC. The graphics and AI performance increases are outstanding and even unexpected. We're looking forward to comparing it with the SoC competition.

The increase in CPU performance is modest, and the contrast betwixt them illustrates that workloads like graphics and AI are much more scalable than CPU-based tasks.

Chip companies tend to keep vast and accurate data about "what apps do" in the form of application traces that tin exist run over and over during the architectural design and tune-up. I'm sure that Qualcomm has put resources where information technology brings the nearly value in the coming year: graphics and AI.

We at present know what to expect from Snapdragon viii Gen 1 consumer devices and are looking forward to testing the first units to be launched "this year" or early next twelvemonth – perhaps around the CES timeframe in January.

Filed in . Read more than about Android, Benchmarks, Qualcomm and Snapdragon.