Qualcomm has unveiled a revamped version of its flagship chipset. The new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 (SM8475) promises modest speed improvements and significant energy savings – the original 8 Gen 1 has never been slow, heat and power consumption were its main problems.
Qualcomm advertises 10% higher CPU performance and a 30% improvement in CPU power efficiency. The peak Cortex-X2 core can now reach 3.2 GHz, finally matching the clock speed of the Snapdragon 870 since early 2021 (the X2 in the original 8 Gen 1 reached 3.0 GHz).
The other two CPU clusters also got a boost, here are the new frequencies: Prime core at 3.2GHz, Gold core at 2.75Ghz, Silver core at 2.0GHz. This is 3.0GHz, 2.5GHz and 1.8GHz respectively.
Likewise, the GPU runs at a 10% higher frequency, reducing power consumption by 30%. Additionally, the AI engine now has 20% better performance per Watt ratio. Wireless modems have also become more efficient.
Overall energy efficiency at the SoC level has improved by 15%. To put it in more practical terms, a phone that uses the same chipset can stream video for 1 hour and 30 minutes longer than one that uses the old chip. Voice calls, a light load, can now last 5 hours and 30 minutes longer (other hardware being equal).
To achieve these improvements Qualcomm had to move the foundries: the process is still labeled “4 nm”, although it comes from TSMC rather than Samsung.
Those performance and efficiency improvements are the official numbers. How does the chip behave in real life? Well, Asus sent us a ROG Engineering device to test – take a look at our reality benchmarks and a performance comparison against previous Snapdragon 8 series chips. Note that this ROG phone is not meant to be a commercial device, but is a showcase of the capabilities of the new chip.
The rest of the hardware inside the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is the same. Up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM (3,200MHz) is supported, along with UFS 3.1 storage. The display driver can run QHD + up to 144Hz or 4K at 60Hz, complete with 10-bit rendering (Rec. 2020) and HDR10 + support.
The Snapdragon X65 modem has theoretical peak speeds of 10 Gbps, while FastConnect 6900 offers Wi-Fi 6 / 6E up to 3.6 GHz. Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity includes aptX Lossless and Bluetooth LE Audio (with longer playback times thanks to the greater efficiency).
The chipset houses the same triple 18-bit Spectra ISP capable of handling sensors up to 200 MP and 8K video capture at 30 fps (4K at 120 fps), as well as image processing tricks like multi-frame noise reduction and offset / DoL HDR, there is a bokeh engine and support for HLG, HDR10 + and Dolby Vision formats.
Again, connectivity and image processing capacity were never an issue for the 8th Gen 1. The problem was that heavy workloads would cause the temperature to rise and the battery percentage to drop.
Qualcomm says the first Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 devices will be available in the third quarter (July-September). And there’s a long, long list of manufacturers who are working hard to build those devices. Here they are in alphabetical order: including Asus ROG, Black Shark, HONOR, iQOO, Lenovo, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, OSOM, realme, Red Magic, Redmi, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE.
Start a new Thread