Comparing smartphone CPU to typical desktop/laptop

[GoodEnough]

Are they about the same? Or lag behind?

The current LG G2. Is it the same as a 2013 laptop?
Or is it a few generations behind? Like it's as fast as a 2009 laptop?

 

[vshah]

a few generations behind in total performance

probably pretty similar in performance/watt

 

[paperwastage]

you can actually compare yourself...

look for / go buy a Bay Trail laptop (Z37xx chip) running Windows 8... at max performance, it uses 3.5W

and compare it to a Clover Trail android tablet/phone (Z27xx chip).

Clover Trail is competitive to Qualcomm's Krait / LG G2.
Bay Trail is faster than Clover Trail
Bay Trail can keep up to a Penryn based Core 2 Duo (2010 laptop)

 

[Rdmkr]

The 2.0Ghz Clover Trail+ SoC is barely on the level of the 1.5Ghz snapdragon S4 Pro in benchmarks on its good days and much less consistent/dependable due to x86 compatibility issues. In practice it felt even worse than this implies to me as a Lenovo K900 user.

(maybe you're confused by the 27000 antutu scores that used to do the rounds; those were bogus; dropped down to around 21000 with especially low CPU subscores: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Intel-Atom-Z2580-AnTuTu-score-drops-20-after-revision-to-site_id45271)

 

[paperwastage]

The 2.0Ghz Clover Trail+ SoC is barely on the level of the 1.5Ghz snapdragon S4 Pro in benchmarks on its good days and much less consistent/dependable due to x86 compatibility issues. In practice it felt even worse than this implies to me as a Lenovo K900 user.

(maybe you're confused by the 27000 antutu scores that used to do the rounds; those were bogus; dropped down to around 21000 with especially low CPU subscores: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Intel-Atom-Z2580-AnTuTu-score-drops-20-after-revision-to-site_id45271)

that's why I say "competitive", not "better". it may be 0-30% slower, but not 50% slower.... (okay, it maybe 50% slower....)

Clover Trail < Bay Trail
Clover Trail < Qualcomm Snapdragon
Bay Trail ~= 2010 Penryn C2Duo

Bay Trail ?=? Qualcomm Snapdragon
2010 Penryn C2Duo ?=? Qualcomm Snapdragon

as you said, atom/x86 isn't really optimized for android yet (less consistent).. hopefully intel will improve on that

which is what vshah says.... phone CPUs are a few generations behind desktop CPUs

 

[poofyhairguy]

I think 5 years behind that year's midrange is a good rough idea.

 

[Eug]

Depends on how you look at it.

I personally find surfing on a fast mobile CPU quite decent in most instances. In fact, I've tried this with an older Android phone (2012) with a dual-core ARM CPU with a desktop monitor, keyboard and mouse, and speedwise it was OK.

The main problems were:

1) Android surfing doesn't work well with a mouse and keyboard.
2) No flash.

Fast forward to 2014, and I think the CPU speeds now are now good enough. Android just needs to fix the interface issues for desktop usage. It doesn't seem like a priority for them though, since it's a mobile OS and for laptop/desktop functionality they're pushing Chrome OS instead.

 

[notposting]

Do you think it's more of mobile GPU's catching up?

They are basically integrated graphics, right? Remember how crappy integrated graphics were before? Even the Intel ones on the desktop are quite usable now.

I think that is probably the big leap, multiple cores but advances in the GPU's and offloading all sorts of encoding/decoding type stuff now.

 

[mmntech]

According to Geekbench, the iPad Air is is about as powerful as a Late 2008 MBP with a 2.4ghz Penryn Core 2 Duo. Not too shabby. Top android devices are about the same give or take. So right now mobile performance is about 5yrs behind conventional computers.

You can make an energy efficient tablet or phone with a current desktop grade processor. Microsoft did it with the Surface Pro. However, thermals start to become an issue. Which means the device has to be thicker, heavier, and noisier to accommodate the cooling system. That's not what people want, so a little performance is sacrificed. Most of these devices do a good enough job performing the tasks most people use them for.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Do you think it's more of mobile GPU's catching up?

Mobile GPUs are actually ahead of the CPUs. Most are already unified shaders, and the best ones have the power level of what the Xbox 360 has.

 

[paperwastage]

Depends on how you look at it.

I personally find surfing on a fast mobile CPU quite decent in most instances. In fact, I've tried this with an older Android phone (2012) with a dual-core ARM CPU with a desktop monitor, keyboard and mouse, and speedwise it was OK.

The main problems were:

1) Android surfing doesn't work well with a mouse and keyboard.
2) No flash.

the inverse is true as well

tablet surfing (no keyboard/mouse) on Windows 8.1 (full x86) is a pain as well

with Intel's low power Atoms, hopefully we get dual devices (android + windows 8 compatibility. android for tablet/media consumption, windows for power-user)... but microsoft/google's want of being the sole "go-to" OS might hinder that

 

[ChronoReverse]

It's very hard to compare because a lot of work has been put into making mobile software more efficient.

For example, when the Core 2's came out, most people still had to decode h.264 using software with the accelerated solutions on desktop really immature. Meanwhile, I can't even think of a mobile smartphone that wouldn't have h.264 acceleration. With the demise of Flash on mobile, this means places where a C2D could demonstrate its power simply aren't necessary.


I wouldn't put too much stock into benchmarks like Geekbench or Antutu either. It wouldn't be difficult to make benchmarks that demonstrate the strengths of a Core 2 that would make mobile chips look bad (except maybe the A7).

 

[poofyhairguy]

It's very hard to compare because a lot of work has been put into making mobile software more efficient.

Well and the power is distributed difference. Two Core 2 Cores vs a quad core Snapdragon.

That is why Apple's SOC is so interesting, it basically is a Core 2 Duo.

 

[s44]

I think 5 years behind that year's midrange is a good rough idea.

Funny thing is, my desktop CPU is now 5 years old... And still totally fine, including for games.

 

[TuxDave]

Funny thing is, my desktop CPU is now 5 years old... And still totally fine, including for games.

The CPU in the LG G2 is waaaaaaaaay slower than a 5 year old desktop chip (using Q6600 as a random 7 year old reference). It's probably on par with a 5-6 year old laptop cpu's performance (C2D or something in a Macbook air)

The CPU in the LG G2 was not designed nor expected to run in a desktop power envelope. As a result, if you tried to increase the voltage and frequency as far as you could I would expect:

1) You'd still be no where near the 100W envelope.
2) You'd still behind the Q6600 in performance

It's a little weird to compare CPUs targeting different segments. Perf/power is optimized around the typical usage of specific segment and a CPU will eat up as much of the power envelope it can for that segment. You can still compare performance/Watt but you can't directly use that to compare a smartphone experience vs a desktop experience.

(Disclaimer: I may be biased )

Edit: An ant can carry 100x its own body weight. I would be pleased if I could carry 50% of mine. But we can't conclude that an ant is therefore stronger than me. (I hope)

 

[poofyhairguy]

Yeah, laptop not desktop. Mobile is like 8 years behind the desktop.

 

[paperwastage]

Yeah, laptop not desktop. Mobile is like 8 years behind the desktop.

i wouldn't say so. i would say mobile is limited by heat/power, probably 2 generations behind desktop due to this limitation (each generation, you get maybe 10-15% performance improvement)

probably since Sandy Bridge, mobile and desktop processors use the same architecture.

if you match the top line desktop vs top line laptop, of course desktop will win because it has a higher frequency/core count.

http://techreport.com/review/24879/intel-core-i7-4770k-and-4950hq-haswell-processors-reviewed/12

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2013/05/25/don-t-be-fooled-by-laptop-cpus/
look at this example above: a i3 desktop is almost even to a i7 laptop

i3 desktop has 2/4 C/T @ 3.3ghz.
i7 laptop has 4/8 C/T @ 2.4ghz

 

[ChronoReverse]

That is why Apple's SOC is so interesting, it basically is a Core 2 Duo.

In many ways it does match the Core 2's specs but it's still behind in enough ways (even ignoring frequency scaling) that it's not really at that level yet. Still a very impressive design of course.

 

[GoodEnough]

My CPU is QuadCore Athlon II X4 635
I think it's from 2009.

My desktop is still fast as $#%#%@$#.

If I wanted to upgrade this CPU just for kicks, what would be a best value upgrade (price/performance) that is a direct swap on the same MB ?

 

[gmaster456]

About 5 years behind a midrange laptop of the time. And that's being generous.

 

[sm625]

Bay Trail can keep up to a Penryn based Core 2 Duo (2010 laptop)

I wouldnt go that far. Even at its lowest speedstep state of 800MHz, a penryn matches or beats bay trail in single thread IPC. A reasonably clocked notebook penryn (2.4GHz) is three times as fast.