Discussion Qualcomm Snapdragon Thread

[Doug S]

The success or failure of Qualcomm's PC efforts will have almost nothing to do with Apple, and whether they beat or lag Apple in performance will make little difference in its sales.

Its success will have far more to do with how PCs with Qualcomm CPUs compare to Intel & AMD PCs in price and performance, and how seamless it is to run ARM version of Windows (i.e. if someone handed you a Qualcomm based laptop running Windows and you played around with for an hour, would there be "hints" in terms of glitches or issues that would let you know that it is running on ARM?)

 

[SarahKerrigan]

The success or failure of Qualcomm's PC efforts will have almost nothing to do with Apple, and whether they beat or lag Apple in performance will make little difference in its sales.

Its success will have far more to do with how PCs with Qualcomm CPUs compare to Intel & AMD PCs in price and performance, and how seamless it is to run ARM version of Windows (i.e. if someone handed you a Qualcomm based laptop running Windows and you played around with for an hour, would there be "hints" in terms of glitches or issues that would let you know that it is running on ARM?)

Thank you. I've seen a lot of the weird take that Snapdragon laptops' real competition is Apple, because they're both ARM. I find it baffling - a Windows laptop competes first and foremost with other Windows laptops.

 

[gdansk]

Hmm, well, Qualcomm considers Apple its primary competition.
It's like with their other phone SoCs, even if they don't compete with Apple, it's the one they'll actually be compared to.

 

[FlameTail]

Snapdragon 8G4 leak:

https://x.com/Tech_Reve/status/1730417341937443164?s=20

"Qualcomm is easily surpassing Apple.

The 8G4, consuming 8 watts of power, achieves a multi-score exceeding 10k on GB6, and the GPU is also remarkable.

In simple terms, the Adreno 830 demonstrates GPU performance improvement and power efficiency at the level showcased by the 8G2" -Revegnus.

 

[Saylick]

I don't pay too much attention to what is a competitive smartphone SOC benchmark score, but how important is MT scores for day-to-day usage? Aren't most apps going to benefit more from ST performance? Between two SOCs, one which has a 20% ST advantage and the other having a 20% MT advantage, I think I'd choose the former.

 

[gdansk]

I don't pay too much attention to what is a competitive smartphone SOC benchmark score, but how important is MT scores for day-to-day usage? Aren't most apps going to benefit more from ST performance? Between two SOCs, one which has a 20% ST advantage and the other having a 20% MT advantage, I think I'd choose the former.

GB6 made the correct choice for "normal" users. For phones I don't know why you'd want more MT beyond a certain point over more ST. Are you running containers on your phone? Well maybe but probably not.

 

[FlameTail]

Imo the more significant thing about this leak is not that it hits 10000 in GB6 MT, but the fact that it does it at 8W.

That's very very good power efficiency.

 

[Doug S]

Hmm, well, Qualcomm considers Apple its primary competition.
It's like with their other phone SoCs, even if they don't compete with Apple, it's the one they'll actually be compared to.

Where's the evidence they consider Apple their primary competition? Sure they mention Apple a lot because Apple has got a lot of free publicity over the last few years for putting a fast and efficient ARM CPU into PCs, and they want to benefit from that by saying "hey we also have a fast and efficient ARM CPU".

Their ability to steal Apple's market share is extremely limited. For over a decade people were paying a premium for Macs running Intel CPUs that were almost always out of date - sometimes wildly out of date - compared to the Intel CPUs in Windows laptops. What does that tell you? That tells me that the reason people were buying them went beyond a simple price/performance equation that many PC buyers use, or even similar hardware build quality/design in the case of LG's Gram, and Apple's OS, brand loyalty, ownership of iPods and later iPhones, etc. figured into it in ways that will be unaffected by anything Qualcomm can do on the CPU design front.

If Dell or LG weren't able to take market share from Apple even when they were selling Macbooks with 18+ month old Intel CPUs, why in the world does anyone think Qualcomm would, even if a future iteration of their SoC beats Apple performance wise?

Their primary competition is and always will be x86 Windows PCs. That's the market they have to win customers from.

 

[gdansk]

Where's the evidence they consider Apple their primary competition? Sure they mention Apple a lot because Apple has got a lot of free publicity over the last few years for putting a fast and efficient ARM CPU into PCs, and they want to benefit from that by saying "hey we also have a fast and efficient ARM CPU".

Their ability to steal Apple's market share is extremely limited. For over a decade people were paying a premium for Macs running Intel CPUs that were almost always out of date - sometimes wildly out of date - compared to the Intel CPUs in Windows laptops. What does that tell you? That tells me that the reason people were buying them went beyond a simple price/performance equation that many PC buyers use, or even similar hardware build quality/design in the case of LG's Gram, and Apple's OS, brand loyalty, ownership of iPods and later iPhones, etc. figured into it in ways that will be unaffected by anything Qualcomm can do on the CPU design front.

If Dell or LG weren't able to take market share from Apple even when they were selling Macbooks with 18+ month old Intel CPUs, why in the world does anyone think Qualcomm would, even if a future iteration of their SoC beats Apple performance wise?

Their primary competition is and always will be x86 Windows PCs. That's the market they have to win customers from.

I guess it's a different concept of competition. Qualcomm may take market share from Intel/AMD.

But Oryon is still competition to Apple SoCs on technical merits. It's like how Apple does comparisons to Nvidia GPUs despite having almost no market overlap. They're still the competition Apple's GPU team aims at.

Hopefully Oryon can actually perform without abusing power limits. Intel/AMD simply have not been able compete in the low power, quiet, long-lasting laptop while retaining peak 1T performance since M1. That's competition Qualcomm can bring if it keeps aiming at M series chips as I'd stop buying MacBooks if such a machine were available especially with an OLED display and no idiotic notch.

Everything new is web-based or Electron now. It doesn't matter if it's running in ChromeOS or MacOS or BingOS. But still software problems may throw a wrench in the works because people really do expect old software to work on Windows but almost no one expects that for MacOS. It's possible I'm the only MacOS user in the world who isn't locked to Apple's ecosystem but I doubt it. Especially with all those old dualboot Intel Macs approaching retirement age.

 

[Thibsie]

Put it simply :

• Qualcomm is in competition with Apple from a technical perspective (and marketing based on this)
• Qualcomm is in competition with the Windows market from a product PoV.

Simple, huh ?

 

[FlameTail]

Have you guys seen this graph before? Found it from a X post. This graph is showing CINEBENCH2024, whereas the more widely circulated one shows Geekbench6.



Anyways the first graph makes the X Elite look pretty bad. It's pulling almost 80W?

 

[moinmoin]

Have you guys seen this graph before?

Can't read the fine print. Is there no higher resolution available?

 

[gdansk]

Put it simply :

• Qualcomm is in competition with Apple from a technical perspective (and marketing based on this)
• Qualcomm is in competition with the Windows market from a product PoV.

Simple, huh ?

Pretty much. But Oryon and its ilk will be in phones too where Cove and Zen do not play. And the core will reflect this.

Pricing will be determined by competition with Intel laptops that do not have to deal with emulation. So it's a pretty bad place to be unless the chip is really good.

 

[soresu]

Qualcomm may take market share from Intel/AMD

Without significantly altering their expected profit margins they get for Android SoC's I doubt it.

They are going to need to swallow that for a significant amount of time to make it cost competitive given they have a near non existent mindshare in the PC market currently.

AMD have a hard enough time competing with Intel's entrenched mindshare despite being perf + cost competitive and in the market for over 2 decades, so I don't see Qualcomm making great inroads easily.

 

[FlameTail]

Can't read the fine print. Is there no higher resolution available?

I have not been able to find one.

 

[gdansk]

Without significantly altering their expected profit margins they get for Android SoC's I doubt it.

They are going to need to swallow that for a significant amount of time to make it cost competitive given they have a near non existent mindshare in the PC market currently.

AMD have a hard enough time competing with Intel's entrenched mindshare despite being perf + cost competitive and in the market for over 2 decades, so I don't see Qualcomm making great inroads easily.

Yes, I am not optimistic of market success. Many good products fail for various reasons. And it's not yet clear SDXE is actually good.

 

[FlameTail]

Yes, I am not optimistic of market success. Many good products fail for various reasons. And it's not yet clear SDXE is actually good.

That's a very ominous statement.

 

[qmech]

View attachment 89600


Have you guys seen this graph before? Found it from a X post. This graph is showing CINEBENCH2024, whereas the more widely circulated one shows Geekbench6.

View attachment 89601

Anyways the first graph makes the X Elite look pretty bad. It's pulling almost 80W?

What is bad about the X Elite being able to draw 80W?

These are marketing graphs showing scaling. That Qualcomm include as much of the graph as they do just makes it easier for us to get a better sense of the SoC's performance under various conditions and should be applauded, IMHO.

In a realistic mobile setup, an 80W burst is certainly feasible (the Intel chip has a PL2 of > 100W). The default for Intel is 56 seconds at PL2 (IIRC), so longer jobs will see the system clock back down, but really cranking for a minute to render a short snippet in After Effects (or whatever your use case might be) can make for a better experience.

 

[qmech]

I don't pay too much attention to what is a competitive smartphone SOC benchmark score, but how important is MT scores for day-to-day usage? Aren't most apps going to benefit more from ST performance? Between two SOCs, one which has a 20% ST advantage and the other having a 20% MT advantage, I think I'd choose the former.

The vast majority of apps do not seem to take much advantage of either. If you compare a Galaxy S21 and an S23 side by side, you would be very hard-pressed to notice the > 30% difference in both ST and MT performance. The nearly doubled graphics performance is more noticeable, but it doesn't feel *awesome* by any stretch of the imagination (at least in anything I've tried to throw at them).

The problem might be that almost all apps are made to work *very* well on mid-range phones (and acceptably on low-end) and the performance of those mid-range phones are just significantly below even an older flagship. Take that S21 that was spanked by the S23 and compare it to the Galaxy A54, the top mid-range Samsung for 2023, and the old S21 spanks the A54 just as much as the S23 spanked the S21.

If your app has to work near-perfectly on a mid-range phone that might even be a year or two old, then it can be difficult to take full advantage of whatever the new high-end has to offer.

 

[FlameTail]

What is bad about the X Elite being able to draw 80W?

Because it makes the X Elite's efficiency look bad.

How do Apple's Mx Max chips compare?

 

[FlameTail]

The vast majority of apps do not seem to take much advantage of either. If you compare a Galaxy S21 and an S23 side by side, you would be very hard-pressed to notice the > 30% difference in both ST and MT performance. The nearly doubled graphics performance is more noticeable, but it doesn't feel *awesome* by any stretch of the imagination (at least in anything I've tried to throw at them).

The problem might be that almost all apps are made to work *very* well on mid-range phones (and acceptably on low-end) and the performance of those mid-range phones are just significantly below even an older flagship. Take that S21 that was spanked by the S23 and compare it to the Galaxy A54, the top mid-range Samsung for 2023, and the old S21 spanks the A54 just as much as the S23 spanked the S21.

If your app has to work near-perfectly on a mid-range phone that might even be a year or two old, then it can be difficult to take full advantage of whatever the new high-end has to offer.

If you asked a 'Techbro' on X(twitter), they'll eagerly tell you how the flagship phone is smoother, opens apps faster, has better animations etc... to the tiniest of details.

Not dismissing what you said, but I wanted to point that out. I think it's funny.

 

[Tup3x]

Because it makes the X Elite's efficiency look bad.

How do Apple's Mx Max chips compare?

It doesn't? It's out of the sweet spot but if one wants max burst performance, it's possible.

 

[FlameTail]

It doesn't? It's out of the sweet spot but if one wants max burst performance, it's possible.

Yeah but the entire philosophy of boosting chips beyond their sweet spot is inherently bad and it is what has lead x86 CPUs to be so inefficient.

I am not the first one to say this. I recall someone else in this forum saying so, many years ago.

 

[eek2121]

Thank you. I've seen a lot of the weird take that Snapdragon laptops' real competition is Apple, because they're both ARM. I find it baffling - a Windows laptop competes first and foremost with other Windows laptops.

ARM laptops can’t compete with other Windows laptops until they can run the vast majority of software without issue. This is not the case today.

 

[qmech]

If you asked a 'Techbro' on X(twitter), they'll eagerly tell you how the flagship phone is smoother, opens apps faster, has better animations etc... to the tiniest of details.

Not dismissing what you said, but I wanted to point that out. I think it's funny.

What I personally would really want is *much* better control over the scaling governors for both CPU and GPU.

It's great that the NewPhone is blazing fast, but it also burns through battery in no time when doing a lot of fairly common stuff (productivity/games). It's the same on litterally every single phone out there, from iPhone to Android, from entry-level to flagship.

Performance doesn't scale linearly with power (sadly) and paying a 50%-75% power premium for the last 10% performance is beyond ridiculous 99.9% of the time, yet the only governors available are "full steam ahead" and "not doing jack", aka normal and battery saver. (No, Samsung's GOS does not count.)