Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 850

Qualcomm Snapdragon 845

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform (or SD845) is a high-end SoC for smartphones that was introduced in early 2018 and manufactured in 10 nm LPP FinFET at TSMC. Integrates 4x Kryo 385 cores (Cortex-A75) at up to 2.8 GHz (max) for performance and 4x Kryo 385 at 1.8 GHz (max) for efficiency. Furthermore offers an X20 LTE modem (Cat. 18 1.2 Gbps downlink, Cat 13 150 Mbps uplink), ac-WiFi and a dual-channel 32-Bit 1866 MHz LPDDR4x memory controller.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G (SD765G Mobile Platform) is a fast mid-range ARM-based SoC largely found on Android tablets and smartphones. It integrates eight cores (octa-core, called Kryo 475) divided into two clusters. A fast performance cluster contains two ARM Cortex-A76 cores clocked at up to 2.4 GHz (prime core) and 2.2 GHz (gold core) and a power efficiency cluster with six small ARM Cortex-A55 cores at up to 1.8 GHz. Depending on the workload only single clusters or all cores can run at different clock speeds.

Compared to the normal Snapdragon 765, the 765G is optimized for gaming. This means the graphics card is higher clocked and the chip also supports additional software features (Snapdragon Elite Gaming like Game Smoother, Game Fast Loader and Game Network Latency Manager).

The processor performance is quite comparable to the old Snapdragon 730G. Only the single core performance can be slightly better, thanks to the higher clocked prime core (+200 MHz = 9% higher).

The chip is one of the first SoCs that integrate a 5G modem. It is called Snapdragon X52 and supports speeds of up to 3.7 / 1.6 Mbps (down- and upload) and mmWave and Sub-6.

The integrated Adreno 620 is also higher clocked compared to the one in the normal 765 and should result in 10% higher performance (according to QC).

The integrated AI engine uses the GPU, CPU and dedicated cores to reach a theoretical maximum performance of 5.5 TOPS.

The processor is manufactured in the modern and energy efficient 7nm EUV process at Samsung. 

Qualcomm Snapdragon 850

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 Mobile Compute Platform (or SD850) is a ARM based SoC for Windows laptops. It is a higher clocked version (3 versus 2.8 GHz) of the Snapdragon 845 for smartphones and also manufactured in 10 nm LPP FinFET at TSMC. It integrates 4x Kryo 385 cores (Cortex-A75) at up to 2.95 GHz (max) for performance and 4x Kryo 385 (at 1.8 GHz?) for efficiency. Furthermore offers an X20 LTE modem (Cat. 18 1.2 Gbps downlink, Cat 13 150 Mbps uplink), ac-WiFi and a dual-channel 32-Bit 1866 MHz LPDDR4x memory controller.

The performance of the Snapdragon 850 in Windows is in theory similar to a Intel Core i5 of the Y-series (e.g. Core i5-7y54). However, this is only the case for native ARM64 compiled applications and games. 32-bit applications that are not compiled for the ARM architecture only run in an emulation and perform much worse (e.g. see Cinebench R11.5 benchmark). 64-bit Intel/AMD apps are not supported at all.

The chip is very power efficient as its produced at TSMC in the modern 10nm LPP process. Therefore, laptops using the Snapdragon 850 can be passively cooled (no fan) and should not throttle under constant load.