Qualcomm Adreno 616 vs Qualcomm Adreno 650 vs Qualcomm Adreno 685

Qualcomm Adreno 616

The Qualcomm Adreno 616 is a mobile graphics card for upper mid-range smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It is included in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 SoCs and based on the Adreno 600 architecture (like the Adreno 630, which should be fully compatible in software).

According to Qualcomm up to 30% faster than the previous generation (Adreno 512 in the Snapdragon 660).

The GPU supports modern standards like Vulkan 1.0 (according to Wikipedia), OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 11 (FL 11_1).

Qualcomm Adreno 650

The Qualcomm Adreno 650 is a smartphone and tablet GPU that is integrated within the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, 865+ and 870 SoCs. The chip will be available from early 2020 and will be used mainly in high-end Android devices. The base clock speed of the GPU is 250 MHz and the boost depends on the used SoC. For the 865 it is 587 MHz, the 865 Plus increased to 846 MHz and the 2021 870 reached 670 MHz.

According to Qualcomm, the Adreno 650 GPU offers a 25% improved performance over the Adreno 640, its predecessor, which is integrated into the Snapdragon 855 SoC. The enhanced performance is achieved by the Adreno 650 having 50% more compute units (ALUs) than the Adreno 640. Furthermore, the clock speed of the pixel shaders was also increased by 50%.

The performance in our first benchmarks of a reference system positions itself above the ARM Mali-G76 MP16 and e.g. in 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme even on the top spot. In GFXBench only the Apple A13 GPU is able to best the Adreno 650 (regarding smartphone GPUs).

As a novelty, the GPU driver can be updated in the Android Play Store. Furthermore, some features are running under the Elite Gaming brand (e.g., 144 Hz display support, desktop forward rendering). 

The Adreno 650 supports Vulkan 1.1, DirectX 12, OpenGL ES 3.2, and OpenCL 2.0 FP. Furthermore, games and videos can use HDR10+ and Dolby Vision (with a supported display). The 650 supports 2 displays with up to 4K 60 Hz / QHD+ 144 Hz.

Qualcomm Adreno 685

The Qualcomm Adreno 685 is an integrated graphics card in the Microsoft SQ1 ARM-based SoC. It is similar to the Adreno 680 in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx SoC for Windows laptops but higher clocked and therefore with a higher theoretical performance (2 versus 1.8 TFlops).