The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Performance Preview: Sizing Up Cortex-X2
by Dr. Ian Cutress on December 14, 2021 8:00 AM ESTSystem-Wide Testing and Gaming
For our system wide tests, we had time to go through Geekbench 5, PCMark, and GFXBench. For workload based testing, we see performance uplifts with the S8g1, and it is a noting that here we tested PCMark with both performance mode on and off, which gave a +10% increase in the score – we’ve seen this before running PCMark on both Arm and x86 devices where turbo and favored cores can have large effects on scores. By contrast, GB5 scored the same.
In our PCMark tests, it's clear who the new ruler of the roost is.
On the graphics side, Qualcomm’s new number-less Adreno that is advertised as being ‘new from the ground up (but we won’t tell you how)’ again offers generational improvements for next year’s Android flagships. Qualcomm historically also offers better graphics performance per watt, so we’ll have to wait until we get the devices on hand to showcase that data. But overall, the gains in these tests show a large +50% performance jump over previous generation S888 graphics performance. In 2022, we'll have MediaTek’s flagship trying to aim for the same market but based on the Mali GPU, and graphics is an area that Qualcomm historically outpaces Mali designs quite easily. The only serious competitor in this space is Apple.
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skavi - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Was somewhat worried about how these types of articles would work out with Andrei gone, but I'm glad to see it's more or less business as usual.Somewhat disappointing X2 results. Could I ask if the test suites were recompiled for the chip? I wonder if any of the V9 required extensions would improve performance. SVE2, in particular, looks super nice to use IMO. Very impressive graphics performance though. I'm very interested to see power consumption.
Also, what does the sentence "It should be noted that Apple’s CoreML is currently not supported, hence the lack of Apple numbers here" mean when there are clearly A15 results in each MLPerf benchmark? Are those GPU/CPU scores? If so, I feel that should be made more clear.
ballsystemlord - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Why is Andrei gone? I never knew he left.1_rick - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
It looks like he just left after his last article--his LinkedIn profile says he's self-employed as of December.shabby - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
That's a shame 😕ksec - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Will he be doing Freelance for Anandtech? Which is what a lot of writers too these days.1_rick - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Try tweeting him or Ian. Probably the best way to find out.Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
I was already freelance, albeit exclusively. But no, I'm not contributing anymore.1_rick - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Ah. Thanks for jumping in and clearing it up!tuxRoller - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Thanks so much for your work!I always looked forward to your articles and appreciated your willingness to engage with the community.
Best of luck.
eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Best of luck in your new ventures!