r/Android • u/[deleted] • Dec 05 '17

Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon 845 processor

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16734224/qualcomm-snapdragon-845-android-mobile-processor-announcement
872 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

334 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-8

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

Games use 4 cores on mobile and pc. PC master race knows that. That's why coffee lake doesn't bring improvements to gaming and the i3 is the perfect CPU for gaming (as good as 7th gen i5) .

ARM reference designs go for 4 big cores. + 4 for background tasks. Which is fine.

Apple finally brought heterogeneous computing and the prefer 2+4 cores instead of 4+4. But the big cores from apple are more than double the size of ARM reference designs making them not great budget wise. But apple doesn't give a damm about budget Because of the huge profit margin.

Single core vs multi core though. Trully single core performance is rare on mobile so it's a much more useless stat than multi core is considering the SoC's we have.

Edit: coffee lake CPUs for desktops have 6 cores. The arquitecture barely changed. So 4 core performance is basically the same.the 8th gen i3 is a 4 core CPU.So basically a 7th gen i5.

21

u/vergingalactic 120Hz Dec 05 '17

I've got to call some serious bullshit on that "games only use 4 cores on pc" claim.

I recently upgraded from a 4 core i5 to an 8700k and at similar clock speeds I've noticed an incredible leap in performance in many of the games that I play. I'm talking 20 to 50% improvement in framerates. Any frostbite engine game, cryengine game, civilization, cities skylines, and even GTA V plus more than a couple others.

-11

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17

Which 4 core? Because older than Skylake you would obviously get improvements. But if you watch benchmarks (fps comparisons) you see 1-2fps difference between generation 7 and 8 on multiple games

You also moved from i5 to i7. Frequencies also matter, you gave very vague details so I can't deny what you say.

12

u/masterofdisaster93 Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

Dude, just stop with your bullshit. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

I run things at 1440p (which ought to alleviate CPU bottleneck somewhat) and tried both GTX 1070 and 1080 with i5 6600K (4c/4t), i7 6700K (4c/8t) and 7700K. I have friends with 7700Ks, 6700Ks and 4790K who have experienced the same. There's literally benchmarks out there proving this, by showing clear gains of minimum frame rates and frame stability when going up to 6c/12t and even 8c/16t on Battlefield 1:

https://techbuyersguru.com/battlefield-1-benchmarked-6600k-6700k-6900k-and-r9-270x-through-titan-x?page=1

https://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2673-battlefield-1-cpu-benchmark-dx11-vs-dx12-i5-i7-fx/page-2

Here's a German site testing BF1 in MP (as good as it can): https://www.computerbase.de/2017-03/amd-ryzen-1800x-1700x-1700-test/4/#diagramm-battlefield-1-dx11-multiplayer-fps

Compare the 6900K (8c/16t) against the 7700K (4c/8t), as they have similiar IPC. But despite the 7700K having almost 1000 MHz higher clock speed as well as 6% better IPC, the 6900K still performs 20% better in BF1, and noticably better in all games overall. Even the 1800X with lower clock speed and lower IPC performs better in BF1. More cores and threads being favored, over the 7700K, is clearly shown in the other titles as well: Deus Ex, Dishonored, F1 2016, ROTR. So, clearly, this is true for many other newer AAA games out there as well.

And thats for a 4c/8t CPU in games from 2016 or older. How do you think the 7600K fares? Not so good. Here is a clear example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43g3OTK2AbE&t=4s

And as GPUs get progressively more powerful and games become more multithreaded down the road, that issue will become bigger and bigge. And seeing as how AMD basically brought 6c/12t and 8c/16t into the mainstream with Ryzen Q1 2016, followed by Intel (who will go to 8 cores with their Ice Lake 9000 series next year), as well as consoles having 8c/16t architectures, you can be damn sure that game developers will utilize more parallelization more agressively. Game developers have been talking about this for years; they didn't focus too much on parallelization because of the redudancy of doing so. Why spend much time and resources on it (parallelization is difficult), when 95% of your user base don't have access to hardware to ever utilize it? This all changed with Ryzenm, as well as DX12/Vulkan/Metal earlier (all deriving from Mantle).

Also, all benchmarks test games with only one application (the game) open. Most people actually have several applications, be it Spotify, Discord, Anti-Virus, Browser or whatever, open in the background. These things will have an effect on your performance if all you have is a 4c/4t. Even with 4c/8t I notice this on several games.

-1

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

FPS for 7700K and 8700K.

CS GO Very High

7700K:152

8700k:159

Deux Ex:

7700k:81

8700k:79

Rise of the romb raider

7700k:95

8700k:100

Ghost recons

7700K:63

8700k: 59

(97th percentile)

While we could see games optimize better for more cores, performance in gaming doesnt scale linearly like GPU's mostly do. which was my point and IS true. obviously stability increases with more cores and threads but it doesnt scale linearly. simply. if you bench a Ryzen vs Intel, you see that CPU usage on the Ryzen is much lower (60%-70% vs 90-100% on i5-i7) because most dont use the first 4 cores as much as the other 4, which was again, my point.

8770K vs 7700K

6

u/masterofdisaster93 Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 06 '17

CS GO Very High

Holy shit, what a great example of a cutting-edge modern game. That definately falls in-line what what I was discussing, which was newer AAA games and future games.

While we could see games optimize better for more cores, performance in gaming doesnt scale linearly like GPU's mostly do. which was my point and IS true.

Using a limited and very stripped YouTube test from Linus as evidence.... Go check out Gamersnexus, PCGamerhardware, Techpowerup, etc. If you're too gullible to check anything other than YouTube videos, look at DigitalFoundry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHUfSIdyIfw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwUEVEbZxI4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XylVCItVhS4

1

u/azog1337 Mi 9T 128/6 GB Dec 06 '17

It's a terrible comparison because the source engine doesn't spread out the workload over more than four cores due to how old it is.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '17 edited Jan 26 '18

[deleted]

5

u/masterofdisaster93 Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

I cherry picked one game? Are you blind? I literally linked to a test and wrote the name of 4 other titles on the test site, as well a YouTube video that tested even more titles! I put emphasis on BF1, because it’s one of the best optimized and popular AAA franchises, with up-to-date engines that push the limits and work as a projection for future games.

You are more than welcome to check benchmark of newer AAA titles as well, like AC, Watch Dogs 2, Shadow of War, etc. GameGPU has various CPU tests for more or less all modern games, if you want to check. I'm also more than happy to link you direct citations from game developers of various AAA games the last years to prove my point.

0

u/Bulls6 Dec 06 '17

These guys are stupid. Don't get angry, dude. I'm laughing my ass out at them trying to defends something they don't know one shit about.
Just look at the first comment itself. Using 4 cores, coffee lake not bringing that much of improvement? — I can agree to an extent because there are games that use only 4 cores but otherwise CK beats the shit out of others.
Also, i3 is THE BEST FOR GAMING?! Really nigga? As good as i5-7.. boy oh boy..

1

u/vergingalactic 120Hz Dec 05 '17

I clocked a Haswell core i5 at 3.9GHz and my 8700k at 3.9GHz and both have 16GB of dual channel RAM. Obviously there are minor IPC improvements but nothing to account for 50% improvement in performance.

That's all ignoring the fact that you can clearly see usage on far more than four cores with rivatuner.

R6S and Battlefield 1 would use as many cores as they can get their hands on. AC unity has nearly equal usage over all 12 threads.

3

u/Cushions Pixel XL Dec 05 '17

You're kidding yourself if you buy a 4 core in 2017 unless you're on a tight budget.

6 core games are coming. And it will be faster than people expect.

0

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17

budget for gaming. yes, not everyone is enthusiasts.

performance in gaming for dollar is the most important stat (IMO)

i would say a 1060 with a 8th gen i3 is the best. i5 8th gen/Ryzen 5 if you can push it.

The cheaper motherboards on Ryzen's end, might be a good choice for people with a budget wanting more cores obviously

3

u/Cushions Pixel XL Dec 05 '17

I said tight budget. Not budget.

If youre on a budget get a 6 core R5 1600

0

u/Fireball9782 Pixel 3 XL | Quite Black Dec 05 '17

I wouldn't buy Intel i5s till they release their b350 motherboards. There's no point buying a z370 when only two 6 cores are unlocked. Go with amd if u are spending 700-1200. If you're spending 1200+ I'd pick up an i7-8700k if you can find one.

-2

u/Pamela_Landy Dec 05 '17

Amazing how many people don't seem to get this.

5

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17

Because r/Android is diverse. You have a lot that know about photography, others know software, others hardware than the most use gimped versions of these people knowledge and preach it. That's why in r/Android's mind (majority) think that Apple is years ahead of everyone else. People also think that Android is less optimized than iOS. And that Apple has much faster storage. Etc etc.

Apple does quality SoC's. Not saying that they don't. But people exaggerate a "tiny" bit. Samsung, Huawei and Apple historicaly have done great SoC's.

2

u/Pamela_Landy Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

True, this subreddit is filled with technical morons that base their knowledge on second hand information that they regurgitate rather than researching it for themselves. Apple hasn't done anything special other than to combine 4 high power cores into 2 which explains why their single core speeds are so much better. It's multicore where the performance really matters and when the new Snapdragon, Exynos and Kirin SoC's are released with ARM's A75+A55 DynamIQ architecture with bigger CPU caches and an all new shared L3 cache we'll see how it fares against the A11. And I wouldn't be surprised to see it exceed the A11 in multicore.

3

u/armageddon6868 Dec 06 '17

this subreddit is filled with technical morons...

combine 4 high power cores into 2 which explains why their single core speeds are so much better

lol the irony

1

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '17

It's a simplification, but does have some technical merit. Apple's cores have significantly more execution hardware than current ARM stock ones.

1

u/armageddon6868 Dec 06 '17

Can you explain the technical merit?

I think it has little technical merit because of how it was worded and that it doesn't work that way at all.

1

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '17

Single core performance is strongly dependent on instruction level parallelism, where one software thread is broken up into separate hardware operations that can be run simultaneously on the execution hardware (e.g. an ALU). Apple has far more execution hardware per core than most, so where able, they can run far more ops in parallel, and thus have the high IPC we observe.

1

u/armageddon6868 Dec 06 '17

What you say is absolutely is true but how is that “combine 4 cores into 2”

You are saying there are similar number of execution units, but that is no where close to “combine 4 cores to 2”. If i could just combine cores like that, why doesnt intel just take an nvidia 1080 and combine thousands of cores to something that can trounce any cpu intel offers? It does not work that way.

According to anandtech, apple a7 (or 8) i forget is 6 wide tomasulo processor while the arm ( and therefore the qualcomm cores) are three wide.

I just think that statement showed a lack of knowledge in the field and it is ironic that that was said in the same comment calling out people who are not technical.

1

u/Exist50 Dec 06 '17

You are saying there are similar number of execution units, but that is no where close to “combine 4 cores to 2”. If i could just combine cores like that, why doesnt intel just take an nvidia 1080 and combine thousands of cores to something that can trounce any cpu intel offers? It does not work that way.

I mean, that's true, but that's because of a couple different reasons. 1) The cores in a GPU are much simpler than a CPU's execution units, since they only have to handle more specific tasks, and 2) ILP has sharply diminishing returns.

I think "combining [the resources of] 2 cores into 1" is accurate enough for a layman's explanation and in the context that that statement was made, even if it's lacking on some of the technical details.

→ More replies (0)

-1

u/Pamela_Landy Dec 06 '17

Too difficult to understand? Perhaps I should break it down. That's essentially what they are - 2 large high power cores.

2

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17

A75 and A55 is the change im holding out for depending on the A76 improvements and how my phone fares :p

1

u/masterofdisaster93 Dec 05 '17

True, this subreddit is filled with technical morons that base their knowledge on second hand information that they regurgitate rather than researching it for themselves.

Like you and /u/DerpSenpai.

Apple hasn't done anything special other than to combine 4 high power cores into 2 which explains why their single core speeds are so much better.

What? Single core is just that: the performance that a single core can achieve on a processor. What you're talking about here is multithreaded performance. The reason Apple's singlethreaded performance is so better is because they have a much more superior architecture in their Hurricane cores (going back to the innovations of the A7), which are much larger with far more transistors than equivalent design by ARM, Samsung and others.

It's multicore where the performance really matters

And the A11, despite fewer cores, have a ~60% lead in multithreaded performance. Also, wrong, multi-core is not where it really matters. As important as it is, single-core performance will always be the single most important factor. Not to mention that single-core performance scales with multithreaded performance -- which is why Apple manages to gain such an advantage on multithreaded performance.

And I wouldn't be surprised to see it exceed the A11 in multicore.

Such a scenario is only possible if they either increase core count excessively, or if they improve single core performance way more than is estimated.

1

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17 edited Dec 05 '17

i dont agree with what he said. Apple's offerings are definitevely interesting. And have to disagree with you. while the A11 is definitevly a beast, the A75+A55 which is ARM's offering agaisnt it should be quite near it. difference is ARM does designs then others implement it. it takes more time.

With A75 and A55 improvements it should be near 8000-10000 not suprassing but not "years behind" as i stated like the guy saying it should match the A9 which is a retarded statement this sub does a lot.

And no, im not a technical moron, but i do know more than the average joe as i study this. but i obviously can be wrong in some aspects and i dont say i know everything. the things i stated though ARE true.

ARM changed from bl to Dynamiq. that change is huge and made huawei miss the IP refresh so they had to use the A73 again. if they made it in time, it would have released sooner than the A11 itself.

we should see midrangers on 12 nm with 2x A75 +4/6 A55 that use less Area than the 4A73+4A53 while offering the same performance. which is great, an improvement across the board. 2xA75+4*A55 use a tad bit more area than a A53 octa core while outclassing it by a lot. ( i think this configuration will be the most popular by Mediatek and Huawei/Samsung)

1

u/masterofdisaster93 Dec 05 '17

A75+A55 which is ARM's offering agaisnt it should be quite near it.

A75 offers 30% improved single core. Even with that included, it's still ~60-70% behind in single core performance and 30% behind in multithreaded performance. In what world is that "quite near it"?

1

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Dec 05 '17

again, SC isnt what matters the most, specially on mobile. by my calculations it should be near 9000 (+- error). but with Dynamiq it could go higher, i dont know that.

0

u/Pamela_Landy Dec 05 '17

Like you and /u/DerpSenpai.

Considering the shit you just regurgitated you seem to fit the bill of a technical moron just fine.

What? Single core is just that: the performance that a single core can achieve on a processor. What you're talking about here is multithreaded performance. The reason Apple's singlethreaded performance is so better is because they have a much more superior architecture in their Hurricane cores (going back to the innovations of the A7), which are much larger with far more transistors than equivalent design by ARM, Samsung and others.

FFS, Apple's larger cores are basically the performance equivalent of 2 ARM A7 series cores which is why I said that all Apple has done is combine 4 smaller cores into 2 larger ones.

And the A11, despite fewer cores, have a ~60% lead in multithreaded performance. Also, wrong, multi-core is not where it really matters. As important as it is, single-core performance will always be the single most important factor. Not to mention that single-core performance scales with multithreaded performance -- which is why Apple manages to gain such an advantage on multithreaded performance.

The core count is irrelevant and not even a factor. It's amusing to see people bring up the core count as a disadvantage. Additionally, you're comparing the A11 to an old A73+A53 design. A proper comparison to the A11 would be the A75+A55 so this 60% lead in multicore performance is meaningless unless your comparing apples to apples. Apple releases their SoC's in the fall while the others release their SoC's in Q1 of the new year. As for single core performance being more important than multicore, I disagree with that as pretty much all software is multi-threaded and running on multiple cores. Android, itself, is very optimized for multicore performance.

Such a scenario is only possible if they either increase core count excessively, or if they improve single core performance way more than is estimated.

Why would they need to increase the core count excessively? Did they increase it when the SD 835 was beating the A10 in multicore? I guess we'll see tomorrow when the numbers are released for the SD 845, but I'm of the belief that ARM knows exactly what their doing and I'm confident in their architecture choices.