Full specs leak for Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 820 SoC

05 August, 2015
The Snapdragon 820 has been frequently discussed during the past few months. After the major overheating scandal that engulfed the Snapdragon 810 and definitely took its toll on Qualcomm's standing in the mobile industry as a whole, the company is needs to do some major damage control with its next generation of chips.

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  • m
  • mas39
  • MJS
  • 17 Sep 2015

I can see alot of jealous people on here, always mocking Qualcomm about this so called overheating issues which have never prevailed, hmmm I wonder what Samsung will do when the s820 becomes so successful, which it will do, just unbelievable features, looks like goodbye exynos for another 10 years.

    • ?
    • Anonymous
    • uug
    • 10 Aug 2015

    AnonD-352420, 06 Aug 2015Sure you have... And what do you mean with best performance... moreoh.. none of them.. caude i have faced none of them....

      Anonymous, 06 Aug 2015I don't think that there is any question that 820 will sign... moreThank you for this explanation. It's a question that I've been wondering about when trying to decide on my next phone; whether I should go for either the Moto X Pure Edition or Style, or whether I'll get either of the upcoming Nexus phones. I'm aware of the SD810's overheating issues, so I've already crossed that off my list But I don't want to sacrifice on a phone's performance. Since it's rumored that the new LG Nexus is coming with an FHD OLED screen (which is sure to help with the battery life),and dual front stereo speakers, I became intrigued by it, but wasn't sure about the "mid-tier" SD620 processor, in terms of performance. For a price of $400 for the 64 GB version, this could be one hell of a "mid-tier" phone.

        AnonD-416078, 05 Aug 2015"6k 30fps will now be possible" - Yes, if you wan... morehehe true that it will overheat like a baws, not 1 second though maybe 6 seconds ala 6k vine videos hehehe

          • ?
          • Anonymous
          • Q{Q
          • 06 Aug 2015

          regs, 06 Aug 2015Snapdragon 810 wasn't for phones either. I don't know a sin... moreALL phone chips throttle. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. The question regarding throttling isn't IF, but WHEN.

          And one of the problems that needs to be considered is how heat in a phone is managed. For example; plastic is a pretty good insulator. Air is a very good insulator. Aluminum is a very good conductor. If you want to get rid of the heat in a phone, a good way to do it is to have a thermal conductor on the CPU that ties in to a back cover that is made of aluminum. But even then, you will still have throttling that is affected by the environment around the phone. If you are holding such a phone in your hands, it will retain more heat than if you lay it on a block of ice in a freezer.

          Because of THESE kinds of differences, the performance of a specific PHONE may not actually be representative of the capabilities of its CPU.

            • ?
            • Anonymous
            • Q{Q
            • 06 Aug 2015

            AnonD-407725, 05 Aug 2015Lets see will 820 can compete with 7420I don't think that there is any question that 820 will significantly out-do exynos 7420.

            We can look at this rationally; the exynos 7420 is a quad-core Cortex-A57 + quad-core Cortex-A53 at 2.1 and 1.5 GHz respectively, fabricated on Samung 14nm.

            This compares fairly evenly with the snapdragon 810, except that the SD810 is on 20nm, which equates to a slightly higher operating temperature, which means throttling back a bit sooner.

            But there is another interesting comparison, which may not stand out because it is branded as a MID-tier chip; the snapdragon 620. The 620 is the mid-tier running mate to the 820. What stands out about the 620 is that it swaps out those Cortex-A57's for Cortex-A72's. ARM claims that an A72 will boost performance compared with A57 by a factor of 1.84. Couple that with being built on 14 or 16 nm, the 620, even running at a 14% lower frequency, will obliterate the Exynos 7420 and the Snapdragon 810. 0.86*1.84=1.58. That is the *anticipated* performance increase of the Snapdragon 620 compared to the Exynos 7420.

            AND YET, the 620 is branded as the mid-tier chip relative to the high-end 820.

            Ref: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a72-processor.php

              • D
              • AnonD-352420
              • sk8
              • 06 Aug 2015

              Anonymous, 06 Aug 2015I have 4 s6 and edg3 in my family and real wprld performanc... moreSure you have... And what do you mean with best performance? The most homescreen reloads on a 3gb ram device or the most small lags in flagship device available?

                • D
                • AnonD-328637
                • uNV
                • 06 Aug 2015

                regs, 06 Aug 2015We will see, when Adreno 530 first reviews are out. Right ... moreI can't provide any substantial evidence right now but it will be unveiled in a week so let's just wait and watch.I am however pretty confident in the power of adreno 530.

                  • r
                  • regs
                  • gEE
                  • 06 Aug 2015

                  AnonD-398383, 06 Aug 2015I'm not impressed until I see the power draw for both chips... moreSnapdragon 810 wasn't for phones either. I don't know a single device where S810 doesn't throttle.

                    • L
                    • LaE
                    • iwp
                    • 06 Aug 2015

                    AnonD-416078, 05 Aug 2015You do realize that A8X and X1 are tablet-SoCs and cannot b... moreha ha they say it is a "smartphone chipset" in their own website! huh

                      • A
                      • Ale
                      • 3xL
                      • 06 Aug 2015

                      ...Man Of Steel..., 05 Aug 2015Who needs 8 cores,powerful 4 cores with enough amount of Ra... moreAgreed!

                      And the individual power gating of Qualcomm's custom core designs will afford them a flexibility (in terms of power/performance) that not even Arm's Big.LITTLE can match.

                      And anyone looking to draw comparisons between the Adreno 5xx and Nvidia's current 'mobile' GPU solutions as featured in the K1 & X1 can give up now. Nvidia haven't even pretended that were looking at Smartphones when they developed the K & X Tegra's ( I think the smallest form factor they were looking at was tablets, and even then with certain caveats) this is why they are so massively over sized.

                        • ?
                        • Anonymous
                        • uwQ
                        • 06 Aug 2015

                        AnonD-278667, 05 Aug 2015The samsung exynos sucks..it heats up pretty fast and the S... morehahaha. troll.. my s6 edge is oen i pre ordered and it still works better than any phone u can point out... g4 cannot run hih end games on 2k resolution...

                          • D
                          • AnonD-398383
                          • ksZ
                          • 06 Aug 2015

                          regs, 06 Aug 2015We will see, when Adreno 530 first reviews are out. Right ... moreI'm not impressed until I see the power draw for both chips. Tegra GPUs have great performance, sure, but they're not usually phone chips. The K1 was tablet only, because it was just too hot to run in a phone. It has to run a phone to compare it to the 820.

                            • ?
                            • Anonymous
                            • uwQ
                            • 06 Aug 2015

                            AnonD-352420, 05 Aug 2015I wonder if those Samsung fanboys even have a exynos device... moreI have 4 s6 and edg3 in my family and real wprld performance is better than any other device you can get...

                              • r
                              • regs
                              • gEE
                              • 06 Aug 2015

                              Yet more wonder about Snapdragon 620 GPU from Nexus 5 2015. Will it be Adreno 505 or 510?

                              505 i suppose for Snapdragon 4xx series, so 520 would be more suitable for Snapdragon 6xx. 6xx just should have more powerful GPU than 4xx.

                                • r
                                • regs
                                • gEE
                                • 06 Aug 2015

                                AnonD-292864, 05 Aug 2015By the time Qualcomm releases Snapdragon 820, Samsung will ... moreAgain Qualcomm designs only. It does not release. Snapdragon 820 will be manufactured by Samsung at 14nm.

                                  • r
                                  • regs
                                  • gEE
                                  • 06 Aug 2015

                                  AnonD-328637, 05 Aug 2015Tegra X1 will be superior to Adreno 530 but not by a large ... moreWe will see, when Adreno 530 first reviews are out.
                                  Right now X1's GeForce GM20B outperforms Adreno 430 by 3 times. It's even more performant than desktop Nvidia GT 730 and Intel Iris 6100
                                  GFXBench's Manhattan 1080p.
                                  GeForce GM20B - 63 fps
                                  [s]Radeon[/s]Adreno 430 (S810@650MHz) - 22 fps
                                  Nvidia GT 730 (Windows/OpenGL) - 59 fps
                                  Intel Iris 6100 (Windows/OpenGL) - 49 fps

                                    • ?
                                    • Anonymous
                                    • kg{
                                    • 06 Aug 2015

                                    AnonD-328637, 05 Aug 2015Tegra X1 will be superior to Adreno 530 but not by a large ... moreHow do you now it will not be a lot superior?

                                      • M
                                      • Mark
                                      • YPb
                                      • 06 Aug 2015

                                      G4 Pro you'd better come out soon.

                                        • ?
                                        • Anonymous
                                        • 0rS
                                        • 06 Aug 2015

                                        AnonD-328637, 05 Aug 2015Tegra X1 will be superior to Adreno 530 but not by a large ... moreWhen you tested it? How did you know that?