Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 1: Is The Fire-Breathing Dragon Under Control?

Qualcomm took the wraps off its flagship mobile processor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor on November 15, 2022. It replaces the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and promises to pack in more performance, more battery life, and features.

Qualcomm was hit by a roadblock ever since it started romanticizing Samsung's foundry by ditching TSMC for the Snapdragon 888. All the chipsets built on Samsung's fabrication process such as the Snapdragon 888, Snapdragon 888+, and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 went completely berserk like Aemond's dragon, Vhagar, from House of the Dragon. They suffered severe overheating, performance, and high energy consumption issues. As a result, OEMs and customers started looking away from Qualcomm's flagship processors.

Better sense prevailed, and the North American company joined hands with Taiwan's TSMC for the production of its Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. The efficient process brought the fire-breathing dragon under control and it could finally put down all the power without throttling or eating up the battery.

Fortunately, the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is also built on TSMC's 4nm node and Qualcomm is aiming to catch up with its rivals. Infact, it has left no stone unturned in filling the chipset to the brim with features. It looks like a beast on paper, which might excite Snapdragon fans and also mobile gamers who have been eagerly waiting for this chipset. Let's do a comparison between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, to understand the changes better.

CPU Performance:

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 adopts a 1+4+3 core architecture, which is a departure from the 1+3+4 setup of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. The CPU comprises one prime Kryo core (ARM Cortex-X3 based) clocked at 3.2GHz, four mid cores (ARM Cortex-A715 based) clocked at 2.8GHz, and three efficiency cores (ARM Cortex-A510 based) clocked at 2.0GHz.

In comparison, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 came with one Cortex-X2 prime core clocked at 3.0GHz, three mid-cores (ARM Cortex-A710 based) clocked at 2.5GHz, and four efficiency cores (ARM Cortex-A510) clocked at 1.8GHz.

Qualcomm claims a 35 percent faster CPU performance and 40 percent energy savings with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. This could be attributed to the higher core frequencies in this iteration and TSMC's efficient 4nm process.

GPU Performance:

In terms of GPU, the chipset packs in a new Adreno 740 GPU. It is expected to offer up to 25 percent higher performance and 45 percent improved power efficiency compared to the Adreno 730 of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The Vulkan 1.3 support enables a 30 percent improvement over its predecessor.

The most interesting addition to the Adreno 740 GPU is the hardware-level Ray Tracing support, which is supposed to improve the details, reflections, and shadows in games. Additionally, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 gains the ability to drive displays with QHD+ resolution of up to 144Hz and 4K displays at up to 60Hz.

Expect a blazing-fast overall performance as the CPU and GPU are coupled with LPDDR5x RAM up to 4200MHz and UFS 4.0 internal memory support.

Camera Performance:

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 still features an 18-bit ISP but has reportedly received a few tweaks. It can record 8K videos at 30fps, 4K videos at 120fps, and slo-mo 720p videos at 960fps. Furthermore, it allows for up to three 36MP cameras or a single 200MP camera for simultaneous image capture.

It supports video formats such as HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision. Other features include Qualcomm Spectra Cognitive ISP, Multi-frame Noise Reduction (MFNR), Locally Motion Compensated Temporal Filtering, AI-based face detection, and Engine for Visual Analytics 3.0, among others.

Connectivity:

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 replaces the Snapdragon X65 5G modem with a newer Snapdragon X70 5G modem. Even the Apple iPhone 14 series uses a Snapdragon X65 modem. However, the peak 5G downlink and uplink speeds are 10Gbps and 3.5Gbps respectively are similar to the X65. The modem supports mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G along with global 5G multi-SIM, and Dual-SIM Dual-Active (DSDA) 5G+5G & 5G+4G support.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 pushes the envelope further with the addition of Wi-Fi 7, which is yet to be commercially available. Other notable connectivity features include Bluetooth v5.3 with LE Audio, BeiDou, Galileo, GLONASS, NavIC, GPS, QZSS, NFC, and USB Type-C 3.1, among others.

Benchmarks:

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 scores around 1200 points in single-core and 3500 points in multi-core tests on average in Geekbench 5. Some leaked tests of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powered devices reveal that it could score around 1450 points in single-core and about 4500 points in multi-core tests. Also, it is expected to take a lead of at least 1,00,000 points over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1's scores of about 10,00,000.