How fast are smartphones compared to desktops?

[alyarb]

I can understand 500 gflop per blade being an achievement for IBMs supercomputer business. For 90 nm that is a lot of performance but it seemed so specifically tailored for HPC work that it was slow at everything else. Remember the Visiontek mpeg2 encoder card? Slower than nehalem and totally inflexible.

While the Xenos and Cell instruction set may be shared, the ability of the xbox to cope with numerous branches and threads that you should expect in a gaming scenario surpass the PS3 dramatically. The xbox is much more versatile.

 

[soccerballtux]

The irony being that both are loosely (ok, very very loosely) using the same architecture.

they are, but for most things the SPEs are pointless, whereas having 2 more of the Cell's central processing element (the only thing inside the cell that can make any decisions) is definitely not pointless. (The xbox has 2 more).
Supposedly the CPE's are exactly the same as the 3 processing cores in the Xbox360.

 

[soccerballtux]

Remember the Visiontek mpeg2 encoder card?

no...no definitely do not remember that

 

[Silverforce11]

There will always be different market segments, ppl who just do light work and net browsing will be happy with whatever is barely enough.

Llano laptops are excellent gaming platforms, it runs almost all the games (including BF3) on low and higher resolution than consoles. But that's still not enough for some users who want more power.

Likewise, smart phones will improve, but intel/amd are also going to improve. The point is until ARM comes out with a high power CPU/APU, they will always be relegated to the low performance/low power market... something that intel/amd are working down (LP) towards.

 

[soccerballtux]

There will always be different market segments, ppl who just do light work and net browsing will be happy with whatever is barely enough.

Llano laptops are excellent gaming platforms, it runs almost all the games (including BF3) on low and higher resolution than consoles. But that's still not enough for some users who want more power.

Likewise, smart phones will improve, but intel/amd are also going to improve. The point is until ARM comes out with a high power CPU/APU, they will always be relegated to the low performance/low power market... something that intel/amd are working down (LP) towards.

does grandma desktop user or sister facebook browser need more CPU power than a q6600?
when ARM hits that performance in a quad core...

 

[happy medium]

does grandma desktop user or sister facebook browser need more CPU power than a q6600?
when ARM hits that performance in a quad core...

To be honest, if I didn't game, my old e5200 would be plenty with a 5570/gt430 type gpu. Actually a dual core Llano would be great.

 

[IntelUser2000]

huh

Talk about not reading previous posts before replying!

This is what happymedium said:

1 ARM core @ 1.4 will get ~ a 900 score, x 4 for a quadcore = a 3600 score.

3600 is 2x faster than a Atom D525 @ 1.8

iPhone 4S gets score of ~600. Because its a dual core, not a single core, Tegra 3 would only double the score. iPhone 4S is said to have a ~800MHz CPU. Going from 800MHz dual core to a 1.4GHz quad core results in: 2100, which is 20% higher than Atom D525.

 

[happy medium]

Talk about not reading previous posts before replying!

This is what happymedium said:



iPhone 4S gets score of ~600. Because its a dual core, not a single core, Tegra 3 would only double the score. iPhone 4S is said to have a ~800MHz CPU. Going from 800MHz dual core to a 1.4GHz quad core results in: 2100, which is 20% higher than Atom D525.

That wouldn't change the result a AtomD525 @ 1.8 is just as fast if not faster than a Pent 4, depending on which Pent 4.

A quadcore SOC would still be as fast as a Pent 4.

 

[soccerballtux]

To be honest, if I didn't game, my old e5200 would be plenty with a 5570/gt430 type gpu. Actually a dual core Llano would be great.

yes

 

[IntelUser2000]

I was thinking more like real world usage.
A typical Llano laptop will last 8 hours at idle, 4 hours while watching videos and 6 hours while suffing the web.

A typical SOC laptop should last at least 16 hours idle (?), 14 hours while watching a movie and 14 1/2 hours while surfing the net because while loaded the SOC chip will hardly use any more power at all than idle.

I'm just guessing but this is where power savings should shine.

We already have something achieving pretty close predictions in low usage modes: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2890/asus-eee-pc-1005pe-pineview-arrives/6

14 hr idle
10 hr web
7 hr video

In video, it can be improved by offloading to dedicated video unit, which Pineview doesn't have. The reason we can't get much better than that is because in the PC ecosystem, everyone can deviate from the specifications. Even Windows doesn't help either. We might see the stellar numbers above improve further if optimized for say, Android.

 

[soccerballtux]

Talk about not reading previous posts before replying!

why you make me cry like that

edit: ok finally same page as you now. You were pointing out his numbers wrong. If you had been more cryptic, I might have understood better.

 

[happy medium]

We already have something achieving pretty close predictions in low usage modes: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2890/asus-eee-pc-1005pe-pineview-arrives/6

14 hr idle
10 hr web
7 hr video

In video, it can be improved by offloading to dedicated video unit, which Pineview doesn't have. The reason we can't get much better than that is because in the PC ecosystem, everyone can deviate from the specifications. Even Windows doesn't help either. We might see the stellar numbers above improve further if optimized for say, Android.

Ever hear of DIDIM technology? That should help the cause.
http://androidandme.com/2011/11/new...dim-technology-reduces-backlight-power-by-40/

 

[IntelUser2000]

Ever hear of DIDIM technology? That should help the cause.
http://androidandme.com/2011/11/new...dim-technology-reduces-backlight-power-by-40/

This is Nvidia's version of Intel's DPST(Display Power Saving Technology).

 

[Silverforce11]

does grandma desktop user or sister facebook browser need more CPU power than a q6600?
when ARM hits that performance in a quad core...

Thats assuming desktop software and facebook/surfing will never evolve and push hardware.

I mean why don't we all stick with text based net browsing over telnet?

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Not much a smart phone processor has to do. I would compare it against the PSP.

Had a NGage some years ago when they came out. Games looked so cool on them. That was back then. Played Fifa 07 with 4 spare batteries in my pocket

 

[happy medium]

console quality graphics " perhaps at 960x540 smartphone resolution

Seems the new Acer A701 tablet will use a 1900x1200 (10 inch?) screen with a Tegra 3 SOC this Christmas. Won't be long before a Phone has a high res screen also.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MrYt3Jmi3A
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Acer-Tablet-Tegra-3-Quad-Core-Tablet-A700-A701,14019.html

Here is a dualcore phone with less than half the cpu/gpu power of Tegra 3 running Need for Speed shift with the Hdmi out.

At the end of the video~ 2min 50 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qjlTRBZ0LhI

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Samsung Exynos 4210 and the A5 side by side

GPU comparison

 

[alyarb]

Seems the new Acer A701 tablet will use a 1900x1200 (10 inch?) screen with a Tegra 3 SOC this Christmas. Won't be long before a Phone has a high res screen also.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MrYt3Jmi3A
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Acer-Tablet-Tegra-3-Quad-Core-Tablet-A700-A701,14019.html

Here is a dualcore phone with less than half the cpu/gpu power of Tegra 3 running Need for Speed shift with the Hdmi out.

At the end of the video~ 2min 50 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qjlTRBZ0LhI

This doesn't mean Tegra 3 will bring console quality graphics in android games to android devices. In fact, it means that Tegra 3 absolutely will not do this, because it's simply way, way too soon for you to describe this performance as "console quality," and anyone who does is just drinking marketing koolaid. The models in that game look like they are from a dreamcast game and all it's drawing is a road and a city skybox. The rendering performance is nowhere near that of even a 7 year old GPU. You can hook tegra 2 or tegra 3 up to a 2560x1600 screen all you want but the memory and compute limitations of modern and upcoming Tegra SoCs are incontestable. In fact, Tegra 3 is looking to be the only upcoming SoC with 32-bit wide RAM while the rest have moved to 64-bit. Tegra is at least 5 years away from achieving actual 360/PS3 performance/quality, and by the time Tegra achieves that we will be enjoying the next iteration of consoles with wide memory, heterogeneous compute and large unified shaders that would completely dwarf 360/PS3 let alone Tegra 4/5/6/7/8/9, though there definitely will be great-looking android games by this time, it wouldn't be "console quality" which is itself a moving target, and we won't be thanking Tegra necessarily when Qualcomm and ARM GPUs are showing much more capability than Tegra 3.

 

[micrometers]

I don't think this would be accurate, but it should give you an idea.

According to Geekbench...

iPhone 4S = ~620
Pentium 3 @ 1.4ghz = ~740 (+19%)
Intel Atom D525 @ 1.80ghz = ~1750 (+182%)
My 2500k @4.5ghz = ~10,400 (+1577%)

So basically a top end smartphone today is about as fast as a low end Pentium 3 in its heyday. The next quadcores should be as fast as or faster than the Atom.

I vote this the best post.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I don't think this would be accurate, but it should give you an idea.

According to Geekbench...

iPhone 4S = ~620
Pentium 3 @ 1.4ghz = ~740 (+19%)
Intel Atom D525 @ 1.80ghz = ~1750 (+182%)
My 2500k @4.5ghz = ~10,400 (+1577%)

So basically a top end smartphone today is about as fast as a low end Pentium 3 in its heyday. The next quadcores should be as fast as or faster than the Atom.

Is that single or multi core? I want to guess single core when comparing the 2500k and D525 cores. Theoretically a 2500k @ 1.5 GHz according to those calcs would be around 3500 points, which is only twice as fast as the D525, despite the already 2 core advantage.

 

[alyarb]

"Whether you're running Geekbench on a single-core Pentium, a quad-core Mac Pro, or a sixteen-core Sun server, Geekbench is able to measure the performance of all the processor cores in your system. Every processor benchmark is multi-threaded and multi-core aware to show you the true potential of your computer."

 

[Blitzvogel]

"Whether you're running Geekbench on a single-core Pentium, a quad-core Mac Pro, or a sixteen-core Sun server, Geekbench is able to measure the performance of all the processor cores in your system. Every processor benchmark is multi-threaded and multi-core aware to show you the true potential of your computer."

It's too bad I'm not going to take that score seriously, because it's one possibly arbitrary number meant to represent a set of scores, much like 3DMark scores. I'd rather see a table, comparing all aspects of the tests, not that single score.

My score (in 32 bit trial mode): 5552 (overall, specs in sig)

Is it possible we could make a Geekbench score table here on Anandtech? T'would be useful for comparing different platforms.

 

[happy medium]

This doesn't mean Tegra 3 will bring console quality graphics in android games to android devices

Last I looked Nvidia is helping in the development of high quality graphic games designed around Tegra 2 and now Tegra 3.

The models in that game look like they are from a dreamcast game and all it's drawing is a road and a city skybox.

And it was done on a phone thats 3x less powerfull than a Tegra 3 and looked better than my Dreamcast ,thats sitting right next to me.

Tegra is at least 5 years away from achieving actual 360/PS3 performance/quality, and by the time Tegra achieves that we will be enjoying the next iteration of consoles with wide memory

WHo was saying that Tegra 2 will ever surpass a xbox 360/Ps3 in gaming anytime soon?
In 5 years Tegra chips will be 50x faster (yes 50x) than Tegra 2 and easily look and play better than any of todays consoles. IN fact Tegra 3 will already be better than a Wii IMHO in 8 months at 28nm.

we won't be thanking Tegra necessarily when Qualcomm and ARM GPUs are showing much more capability than Tegra 3.

While I know this is only a guess in your part. The strong point about Tegra is once again Nvidia's strong point and thats software/drivers and working with game companies.
If you follow video cards , you probrobly know this.

Don't forget Nvidia is already 8 months ahead of Qualcomm and being very aggressive.

 

[alyarb]

On paper Tegra 3 is barely faster than the MP400 and theoretically much slower than Adreno 225, 300, or even something as old as SGX543MP2. And here are the practical numbers in 720p..

http://www.nordichardware.se/nyhete...ingen-match-foer-apple-a5-i-grafiktester.html

 

[Blitzvogel]

I'd say Tegra 3 well outdoes the Wii's GPU, though in the end, Nvidia can't do something crazy like go for the best outright mobile GPU at the cost of highly crucial battery life. Balance is the key. I really wonder how the PSVita will do running an SGX543MP4 along with four A9 cores and manage hopefully more than 2 hours of battery life. Whatever, I think Nvidia will surpass the Vita with the next version of Tegra, even if T3 trails behind iPad 2's A5 with the SGX543MP2.