The Snapdragon 865 Performance Preview: Setting the Stage for Flagship Android 2020
by Andrei Frumusanu on December 16, 2019 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Qualcomm
- Smartphones
- 5G
- Cortex A77
- Snapdragon 865
CPU Performance & Efficiency: SPEC2006
We’re moving on to SPEC2006, analysing the new single-threaded performance of the new Cortex-A77 cores. As the new CPU is running at the same clock as the A76-derived design of the Snapdragon 855, any improvements we’ll be seeing today are likely due to the IPC improvements of the core, the doubled L3 cache, as well as the enhancements to the memory controllers and memory subsystem of the chip.
Disclaimer About Power Figures Today:
The power figures presented today were captured using the same methodology we generally use on commercial devices, however this year we’ve noted a large discrepancy between figures reported by the QRD865’s fuel-gauge and the actual power consumption of the device. Generally, we’ve noted that there’s a discrepancy factor of roughly 3x. We’ve reached out to Qualcomm and they confirmed in a very quick testing that there’s a discrepancy of >2.5x. Furthermore, the QRD865 phones this year again suffered from excessive idle power figures of >1.3W.
I’ve attempted to compensate the data as best I could, however the figures published today are merely preliminary and of lower confidence than usual. For what it’s worth, last year, the QRD855 data was within 5% of the commercial phones’ measurements. We’ll be naturally re-testing everything once we get our hands on final commercial devices.
In the SPECint2006 suite, we’re seeing some noticeable performance improvements across the board, with some benchmarks posting some larger than expected increases. The biggest improvements are seen in the memory intensive workloads. 429.mcf is DRAM latency bound and sees a massive improvement of up to 46% compared to the Snapdragon 855.
What’s interesting to see is that some execution bound benchmarks such as 456.hmmer seeing a 28% upgrade. The A77 has an added 4th ALU which represents a 33% throughput increase in simple integer operations, which I don’t doubt is a major reason for the improvements seen here.
The improvements aren’t across the board, with 400.perlbench in particular seeing even a slight degradation for some reason. 403.gcc also saw a smaller 12% increase – it’s likely these benchmarks are bound by other aspects of the microarchitecture.
The power consumption and energy efficiency, if the numbers are correct, roughly match our expectations of the microarchitecture. Power has gone up with performance, but because of the higher performance and smaller runtime of the workloads, energy usage has remained roughly flat. Actually in several tests it’s actually improved in terms of efficiency when compared to the Snapdragon 855, but we’ll have to wait on commercial devices in order to make some definitive conclusions here.
In the SPECfp2006 suite, we’re seeing also seeing some very varied improvements. The biggest change happened to 470.lbm which has a very big hot loop and is memory bandwidth hungry. I think the A77’s new MOP-cache here would help a lot in regards to the instruction throughput, and the improved memory subsystem makes the massive 65% performance jump possible.
Arm actually had advertised IPC improvements of ~25% and ~35% for the int and FP suite of SPEC2006. On the int side, we’re indeed hitting 25% on the Snapdragon 865, compared to the S855, however on the FP side we’re a bit short as the increase falls in at around 29%. The performance increases here strongly depend on the SoC and particular on the memory subsystem, compared to the Kirin 990’s A76 implementation the increases here are only 20% and 24%, but HiSilicon’s chip also has a stronger memory subsystem which allows it to gain quite more performance over the A76’s in the S855.
The overall results for SPEC2006 are very good for the Snapdragon 865. Performance is exactly where Qualcomm advertised it would land at, and we’re seeing a 25% increase in SPECint2006 and a 29% in SPECfp2006. On the integer side, the A77 still trails Apple’s Monsoon cores in the A11, but the new Arm design now has been able to trounce it in the FP suite. We’re still a bit far away from the microarchitectures catching up to Apple’s latest designs, but if Arm keeps up this 25-30% yearly improvement rate, we should be getting there in a few more iterations.
The power and energy efficiency figures, again, taken with a grain of salt, are also very much in line with expectations. Power has slightly increased with performance this generation, however due to the performance increase, energy efficiency has remained relatively flat, or has even seen a slight improvement.
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sweetca - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
Many comments, likely authored by data driven nerds (similar to me) are doing their best to ignore the facts: Years ago, Apple took the performance crown, and still wears it today. Inevitably, one day, someone will usurp Apple's position, but that day does not appear to be soon.Every comment which offers an explanation or justification as to 'why' Apple holds the top position, intrinsically agrees that they so do.
Lolimaster - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
So QC did the same as samsung, just add vanilla ARM cores to their soc, all this years with "custom" core for almost zero gain but tons of problems at certain gens.MagicMonkeyBoy - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
I bought an iPhone 11 pro max. I took the thing back. A13 is way over rated. I don't believe these bench marks. The 865 is a better. Pubg is not good on the iPhone 11 pro max. The previous iPhone allowed you to set the graphics setting higher than the current settings available on the iPhone 11 pro max.Also the ram management is apauling.
When playing Pubg longer than 10 minutes. The phone heats upto 50 degrees Celsius. Hot 🔥.
Then it gets worse. Four out of six cores shut down. Throttling.
And the quality of the game just deteriorates.
The A13 is actually only a 5% increase over the A12.
The 865 when using other bench marks such as a truly cross compatible such as Speed Test G actually reveals that the 865 beats the A13.
https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-865-be...
Gary explains is a better comparison. And more accurate.
I am now waiting for an 865 handset.
These tests seem like some sort of laboratory test instead of a real world test.
The SoC's have been designed knowing what kind of other peripherals are attached.
Amazing... When using the iPhone 11 pro max... You guys make me laugh. For something with such high statistical measurements in comparison to other SoC's. Only makes the A13 look even more foolish.
Take an 855+... When I use a realme x2 pro. When I use the same apps as what was on my iPhone 11 pro max. The realme x2 pro with its 855+ processor on board absolutely runs circles round the iPhone 11 pro max.
For something that is supposedly such high in Specs. Just makes the phone seem even more confounding. And even more humiliating.
When it comes to gaming. 855+ or definately the 865...
A13 in the iPhone 11 pro max is to be avoided for heavy gamers.
And we all know that the flagship snapdragons make better processors for gamers. Which requires optimal CPU's.
Sorry. But as a gamer. These benchmarks are not accurate or realistic at all. More like a laboratory benchmark.
I used to design chipsets and pcbs. At a discrete government laboratory. These benchmarks have a huge amount of discrepancies.
The 865 is overall actually a better SoC than the A13. It is way more dynamic than the A13.
joms_us - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Finally, someone with great understanding and experience on how to properly rate a phone. They don't realize, CPU alone cannot function properly without the help of other modules or components. iPhone 11 is like a PC with i7-9900 + GT 2060 + 3GB DDR4-2400 while Android phone is like Ryzen 3900X + GTX 2080Ti + 2x4GB DDR4-3200The Garden Variety - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
"I used to design chipsets and pcbs. At a discrete government laboratory. These benchmarks have a huge amount of discrepancies."Even taking into consideration the rapid decline of comment quality on AT, this... is next level. Kudos, MagicMonkeyBoy, may your crazy never burn out. A++, would read again.
cha0z_ - Friday, December 27, 2019 - link
For start - the RAM management was a OS bug issue that was fixed in ios 13.2.X release and surely in ios 13.3 that is current. Secondly the missing GFX option is because the DEVELOPER didn't update the game for the new iphone.I had the same problem with the main game I play - vainglory. While the screen is on paper the same as XS max (as resolution and size) - the game UI was horribly buggy and it stayed like that for 2 months till they released an update for that model support. Ofc you will not have problems in any app or such a slow reaction by all the devs - but it happens. Going without saying that after those first few months you will never have such problems in that phone lifetime even if it's 5-6 years.
Third - taking speed test g serious is a lol thing to do. With everything stated below I will not waste my time to go technical why it's not serious.
Btw, used android for 10 years (only high end phones) till I switched to the pro max + I have highly technical background as education, hobby and work - especially in the field of electronics and computers.
Also talking how a chip that even didn't see a release, is better/worse vs X - hahahah :) Not to mention on what usage it's based.
Lastly - my iphone doesn't heat at all even in the heaviest games that are A LOT more heavy than your mentioned pubg joke. Try running full pc civ 6 on your android phones or dead cells... oh, no civ 6 as the performance will be poor on later turns. Also still no dead cells because devs can't make it run good on android available SOCs. ;)
iphonebestgamephone - Saturday, December 28, 2019 - link
Civ 6, the game that runs on a 6s? Dead cells, a side scroller? The developers are targeting what, the lowest end android socs?cha0z_ - Monday, December 30, 2019 - link
The game runs, but how it will run on big map turn 200+ is another story. :)As for dead cells - this is actually quite common, people think the game is light simple gfx wise, because of the art style/decisions. Actually talked with the devs on that topic - everything is 3d and the game is not that light as you might think. As for your absurd last statement - every developer would target the lowest end as it will bring more potential customers.
Do you want to talk about the hundreds more ios exclusive apps? Or to list the recent android "great games" that are on ios from years? I can also tell you thing or two how much better is to develop for ios vs android, how easy is to optimise for 10 devices vs 100000 or even how decent is actually the GPU in the 6s given it's low resolution. Because on android a crap GPU is paired frequently with high resolution screen and defo atleast 1080p, but 1440 is also seen in the budget oriented phones. So the statement how the regular size iphone 6s can game in 2019 is kinda rushed.
iphonebestgamephone - Monday, December 30, 2019 - link
"As for your absurd last statement - every developer would target the lowest end as it will bring more potential customers." - no they dont. Look at grid autosport. Look at fortnite."Do you want to talk about the hundreds more ios exclusive apps? Or to list the recent android "great games" that are on ios from years? I can also tell you thing or two how much better is to develop for ios vs android, how easy is to optimise for 10 devices vs 100000 or even how decent is actually the GPU in the 6s given it's low resolution. Because on android a crap GPU is paired frequently with high resolution screen and defo atleast 1080p, but 1440 is also seen in the budget oriented phones. So the statement how the regular size iphone 6s can game in 2019 is kinda rushed" - you are pretty ignorant arent you? Do you really think all games run at the screens native resolution on android? Why do you think graphics options exist? Do you want to talk emulation? How easy it is to run emulators on android? How many more systems are available to emulate? I dont. Because comparing platforms wasnt the point. It was all about android phones being too weak to run those games you mentioned. The devs should make it available for the flagships atleast for now, if they really want to.
So your iphone never heats up? If you have gfxtool for pubg on ios, get it and put everything to max and run it. Because even at the ingame max settings i have seen iphone x heating up.
cha0z_ - Tuesday, December 31, 2019 - link
I am into android from the start + symbian before than and also senior member with dev/helping known devs with project @ xda. So thank you, I know enough about android.I know that the iphone X heat a lot, it was known design flaw with that phone (if you will point heating apple device, this will top out the list most likely). I am currently with iphone 11 pro max and it never heats even half what my exynos note 9 do (and the exynos note 9 is colder vs the snapdragon variant). It's the first iphone with cooling solution and it really do wonders, you can refer to Andrei's iphone review for deep dive into the matter.
I can play fortnite maxed at 60fps and no fps drops or whatever even after 2 hours of play without major heating and you are talking about PUBG maxed. :)
Ofc that heat will be there, but as you can also read in Andrei's articles/reviews - apple's A chips are leading in performance AND efficiency. The heat you will see coming from A13 will be less than what you will see from the current android SOCs and/or literally can play games smoother with higher quality GFX and with more FPS.
Almost none of the heavier games is running native on mobile, but also most are running on lower res/game details on android vs ios.
Emulation is cool, did a lot on android with it. Including fun stuff like running diablo 2 LOD latest patch on my note 9, believe me - it's playable with the spen when on the go, in home one mouse and the TV = you are good to go. Still, ported or developed games for mobile just works better and you have such a vast library nowdays with high quality games that you really don't need to revisit old classics on your phone. Actually on ios the situation is a lot better, you got a lot more paid apps there vs android.
Btw, I generally prefer android and can write x3 times longer post about what I love there, but if we are talking about gaming - ios is the device to go.