The Snapdragon 810 processor itself is of course the most interesting thing, which is its specific performance. Recently, the foreign media Anandtech conducted a detailed test on the Demo tablet of the Snapdragon 810, and made a system comparison with the currently available Snapdragon 805 and Exynos 5433.

The Snapdragon 810 processor is also very special to Qualcomm. This is the first time that Qualcomm has used the public ARM architecture on its flagship processor for a long time, rather than the self-developed architecture, which means that the Snapdragon 810 is closer to its competitors.

The Snapdragon 810 uses ARM's size core design, which has four Cortex-A53 cores and four Cortex-A57 cores. This design is the same as the Exynos 5433 processor in some models of Samsung's Galaxy Note 4, but the maximum frequency of the 810's A57 core reaches 1.958GHz, The maximum frequency of the A53 is 1.555GHz. The most important thing is that Qualcomm has decided to abandon the software of ARM and Linaro. Therefore, we can only carry out basic research on the energy consumption and performance of the Snapdragon 810.

In addition to SoC, QUALCOMM has integrated Adreno 430 GPU. QUALCOMM said that the new GPU can bring 30% performance improvement, which may mainly focus on the work of dyeing machines. In addition, the high general name 430 is not a simple 420 upgrade, which means that there should be changes in the architecture level inside the GPU. However, QUALCOMM did not disclose the details of the improvement. As for the working frequency, 430 should still maintain the same 600MHz as 420.

To feed the new processors, Qualcomm has equipped the 810 with a dual channel 32 bit (64 bit in total) bandwidth LPDDR4-1555 storage interface. The peak memory bandwidth has reached 24.9GB/s, and the bandwidth is even smaller than that of Snapdragon 805. However, using LPDDR4 also means that it can save 20% power compared with LPDDR3.

In addition to CPU and GPU, Qualcomm also has the highest support for 810 4K@30FPS The HEVC decoder (although Qualcomm did not tell us what bit rate and what decoding settings the decoder supports), the upgraded 14 bit dual ISP supports depth of field effects of multiple cameras or other special photography effects, with the maximum processing capacity of 1.2GP/s, and the audio decoder WCD9330 follows Snapdragon 805.

In terms of RF, 810 is equipped with Qualcomm's new Cat. 9 baseband, which Qualcomm claims reduces power consumption. However, according to our experience, the integrated baseband can save power in theory, but the power saved is a drop in the bucket compared with the power consumption of other parts of the processor. The 810 is accompanied by the RF360 integrated with antenna tuner, CMOS power amplifier/antenna switcher and packet tracker, and the WTR3925 transceiver pulled from the Snapdragon 805 processor.

At last, the highlight is the CPU performance. We are still looking forward to whether Qualcomm can develop its own future on the public architecture. The Snapdragon 810 device used this time is Qualcomm's mobile development platform (MDP) tablet computer. However, during the test, BaseMark X and PCMark could not run, and the reason is unknown.

First of all, we will first refine the score of GeekBench 3. Although the results of this software test are more biased towards theoretical performance and cannot fully represent the actual experience, it is still more than enough for the changes in the comparison architecture. The devices used for comparison are the Exynos processor version of Galaxy Note 4 and Snapdragon 805 version of Galaxy Note 4.  

Since ARMv8 instruction set has added new encryption support, Snapdragon 810's score in GeekBench 3's integer operation is quite ideal, Snapdragon 810 also maintains certain advantages over Snapdragon 805, including BZip2 decompression, Lua script performance, JPEG decompression performance, etc. The overall performance of 810 processor compared with 805 has increased by about 45%, and even if the largest improvement in Lua MT performance is removed, the overall improvement is 30%.

However, not every aspect has improved. Among them, PNG decompression and Dikstra algorithm are represented. The performance of both algorithms has declined. We think this may be due to the fact that the memory bandwidth of 810 is not as large as 805 or the difference in architecture. Compared with 5433, 810 is generally backward.

GeekBe of 810 The floating point score of nch also shows a similar result, and the performance of multithreading is basically 4 times higher than that of single threading. From one side, it also shows that the 810 processor performs well when using all cores. Of course, the SGEMM performance is an exception.

In this project, 810 has finally completed the anti super for 5433. However, 5433 carries out AArch32 mode (i.e. 32-bit operation), while 810 carries out AArch64. Theoretically, 810 should achieve more than 5433. Compared with the 805 processor with a high frequency, the performance of 810 is also improved by about 30%, which is similar to the previous results.

Generally speaking, we should look at GeekBench's memory scores, but here we decide to say something more. Although 810 uses 1555MHz LPDDR4 memory with much larger theoretical bandwidth (5433 only uses 787MHz CCI memory), 810 failed to beat 5433.

As for the performance of 810 in memory latency test, it was even worse. This MDP tablet directly ranked the bottom of the total score. The reason is not clear. I hope we can find out after we get the device with 810 processor.

In the browser performance test related to CPU performance, 810 performed well in Kraken 1.1, ranking second only to Nexus 9, making a good start.

In Octane test, 810 continues to be in the forefront.

However, in the WebXPRT test, 810's performance is even at the same level as 801's. We suspect that 810 may have overheated and frequency reduced. The same test step has also tested the same A57 processor 5433 before, so the problem of incorrect test posture is ruled out.

In the system test of BaseMark OS II 2.0, 810's performance is disappointing, ranking at the bottom of the current flagship intelligent devices. Perhaps the optimization of this test tablet is poor?

In the memory test, the abnormal performance of the 810 is the same as that of the Nexus 9. We are not clear about the reason for this phenomenon. It may be that this development tablet uses an eMMC chip with very good performance. The performance of this test has a lot to do with each device, so it cannot reflect the specific performance of the 810 very well.

In other tests, 810's performance continued to be odd - either first or last, but the final total score was good. The score of web pages and systems in the sub items was poor, 20% behind 5433. For such a development tablet, Qualcomm could push all the questions over the lack of optimization, so it is really difficult to make a final conclusion at present.

However, comparing the 810 test machine with the Nexus 6 using the 805 processor, we still see a significant performance improvement. Although Krait withstood the challenge of the A15 processor, it failed in the face of the more powerful A57, which also conforms to the idea of performance improvement.

In terms of GPU architecture, Qualcomm has not released any information. Our understanding of Adreno 420 is that it only supports OpenGL ES 3.1/AEP until the expiration date. And even if Qualcomm and Nvidia have been hot in the court recently, Qualcomm has not disclosed anything. Based on Qualcomm's statement that 430 is not a simple upgrade of 420, we suspect that 430 may have expanded on dyeing units.

Due to time constraints, our testing of the 810 GPU has to be simplified to the currently widely used 3 (high) D Mark 1.2 and GFXBench 3.0. If you want to see the full set of tests, please wait until we get the 810 mobile phone in the market.

Starting from 3 (high) D (pass) Mark 1.2, compared with 805 reaching 420, 430's performance has improved far more than 30%, even close to 65%. However, considering the GPU driver will have a significant impact on this performance, the current 805 machine Nexus 6 will be a good comparison object, and compared with Nexus 6, 33% improvement is also quite scientific, but among the scores of small projects, 810's physics score is not good, not as good as 805, while 5433 has no such problem.

Continue to look at the GFXBench, which is purely a GPU performance test. Here, we need to note that the 810 development tablet uses a 4K resolution screen, so the performance of opening the screen should be relatively ugly.

From the results of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Manhattan, the performance improvement of the 810 for the 805 is quite obvious (of course, we are talking about the performance of closing the screen, and the 4K resolution of the 810 development tablet has a great impact on the performance). The performance improvement in the Manhattan screen closing has reached 33%, while the performance improvement of Tyrannosaurus Rex is 16%, From one side, it can be seen that the performance improvement of the 430 can be better reflected in the scenes that focus on shading.

At the same time, in the synthesis test, 430 finally showed a strong side. In particular, the ALU performance improved by 46%, but the filling rate was even with 805 in the test, which also convinced us that the improvement of 430 compared with 420 came from the internal coloring unit, while the other parts remained the same.

Finally, GFXBench's Driver Overhead and accuracy test results are basically what we expected. Combined with updated drivers and faster CPUs, better results are warranted. The underlying GPU architecture that has not been thoroughly modified also determines that there will be no improvement in rendering accuracy testing.  

In general, the 430 GPU matched with 810 is almost paranoid about the improvement of color rendering performance. Among the color focused image rendering, the 30% performance improvement claimed by Qualcomm is reliable, but in actual applications, the situation is more complex. Of course, games and application programs cannot simply rely on color to render images. For those color focused applications, The improvement will be obvious, but for more complex applications, the improvement may be limited. However, due to Qualcomm's current market share, many high-level applications in the market are more focused on coloring. As for Qualcomm's 4K experience, we think the performance of 810 is not enough to complete the task of 4K rendering.

As for competitors, Apple's GX6850 and Nvidia's K1 are still standing at the top of the GPU pyramid. Although we don't know how much Qualcomm has invested in 430, one thing is certain: to defeat Apple and Nvidia, Qualcomm must continue to spend money.

In general, in the short time of testing the 810, we haven't found that the 810 will be particularly overheated, and the 810 CPU is not so weak to tell the truth. Qualcomm's optimization of power consumption and control of large and small cores have made some progress.

In terms of RF performance, Qualcomm continues to maintain its strength. It is possible that Qualcomm processors will still be the choice of flagship mobile phones for a long time to come. Although Qualcomm's competitors have also made great progress in RF, to be honest, it is not a day or two to beat major baseband manufacturers.

The real dissatisfaction of 810 is the GPU performance. Although the ALU performance and computing performance of the new GPU have indeed improved, the overall performance improvement has still not met our expectations, and Qualcomm hopes to sell 4K resolution boards with 810 processors. To be honest, it is too early to talk about 4K resolution with 810 GPU performance, As for the 810 manufacturer, as long as it stays on the 1080p or 2K screen, it should be OK.  

When Apple released the 64 bit A7 processor, it really caught Qualcomm off guard. The 810 processor rushed out of the factory no longer has the advantage of competing products. In the past few months, Qualcomm has indeed made a lot of efforts to improve the 810 processor to ensure its position in high-end flagship phones, Although the GPU performance and memory performance of the 810 are not as strong as we expected, the performance of the flagship mobile phone in 2015 should still be promising, although many mobile phone manufacturers cannot produce their own processors.

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