Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 429

Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 is an ARM-based SoC for tablets and smartphones. It is built at TSMC in a 28nm HPM (High Performance Mobile) HKMG process, whereas the Snapdragon 600 was manufactured in 28nm LP. In addition to 4 CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 2.3 GHz, the chip also integrates an Adreno 330 GPU up to 450 MHz, an LPDDR3-1600 memory controller and various radio modules (UMTS/LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS).

Processor 

The CPU portion is based on Qualcomm's Krait architecture, which is compatible with ARMv7 ISA. Compared to the Snapdragon 600 (Krait 300), the new Krait 400 cores of the Snapdragon 800 have been tweaked just slightly with faster L2 cache. Thanks to a clock rate of up to 2.3 GHz and a high performance per MHz somewhere between an ARM Cortex-A9 and a Cortex-A15, the Snapdragon 800 offers very strong CPU performance. The S800 competes with the Nvidia Tegra 4, Samsung Exynos 5420 and Apple A7 and is therefore one of the fastest ARM SoCs on the market as of 2013.

Graphics

Another difference between the Snapdragon 600 and 800 is the graphics unit. While the S600 implements an Adreno 320 (400 to 450 MHz), the S800 features the faster Adreno 330 (450 MHz). Both GPUs offer the same amount of texture units (8 TMUs), but the Adreno 330 has 50 percent more shaders (probably 6x SIMD16 vs. 4x SIMD16 of the previous generation). In conjunction with the higher memory bandwidth, the performance is significantly better. As a result, the Adreno 330 is slightly faster than the Mali-T628 (Exynos 5420) and the PowerVR G6430 (Apple A7). Depending on the device and cooling, however, the performance may vary. The GPU supports OpenGL ES 3.0 as well as OpenCL 1.2.

Features 

Furthermore, the MSM8974 supports many wireless technologies: Bluetooth 4.0, WLAN, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4/5 GHz), GSM (GPRS, EDGE), W-CDMA/UMTS (HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+, cat.29 DC-HSPA+), MBMS, cat.4 LTE, CDMA2000 (1X RTT, 1 × EV-DO Rel.0/Rev.A/Rev.B, 1× EV-DO Rev.A MC, 1× Adv Rev.A/Rev.B) and TD-SCDMA. 

The MSM8974 can encode and play UHD 4K videos in 3840x2160 at 30 FPS (120 Mbps H.264 High Profile) sumiltaneously via dedicated hardware. Moreover, it supports both USB 2.0 and 3.0 and cameras up to 55 megapixels and stereoscopic 3D.

Power Consumption

Thanks to the new 28nm HPM HKMG process, the energy efficiency has been improved significantly compared to its LP 28nm S600 predecessor. Depending on the field of application, the maximum power consumption should be about 3 W for smartphones or 4 W or greater for tablets. This should be similar to comparable ARM SoCs currently in the market.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 429

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 is an ARM-based entry level SoC for tablets and smartphones (mostly Android based). It was announced in mid 2018 and integrates four 64-Bit Cortex-A53 CPU cores (quad-core) that clock with up to 2 GHz. Furthermore, there is a Adreno 504 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (max. 933 MHz) and wireless radios for WiFi and 4G/LTE included in the chip.

The Cortex-A53 is the successor of the entry level Cortex-A7 CPU cores. The A53 is now capable of 64 Bit (ARMv8-ISA) and addressing more than 4 GB RAM. According to ARM the performance per MHz is a lot better and even surpasses a Cortex-A9 core.

The integrated Adreno 504 ist the integrated graphics card that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 / 3.2 and Vulkan 1.0. According to Qualcomm, the GPU is 50% faster than the previous Adreno 308 in the Snapdragon 425.

The integrated wireless radios support WiFi 802.11ac Wave 2, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS/GLONASS/Baidou, 2G, 3G and 4G (LTE Cat.4 / Cat.5 - 150 Mbits download, 75 Mbits upload) standards. Futhermore, the SoC is able to decode 1080p videos in H.265 (encode only in H.264) and cameras with up to 13 MP.

The power consumption of the chip is ranging in the lower range, and therefore it is also suited for smaller smartphones. It is manufactured in the modern 12nm process.