Discussion Samsung Exynos SoC thread

[gdansk]

Also is there any indication whatsoever that Exynos license of RDNA allows them to ship Windows devices with their chips? I suspect AMD wouldn't have agreed to that.

Oh and who knows, maybe Exynos is moving off RDNA anyway.

 

[adroc_thurston]

And whatever driver they are allowed to use is probably not Windows compatible.

They use Mesa.

 

[Saylick]

I know it's a joke but at some point Microsoft switched to make every version the bad version. They count on Windows users suffering anything to play their games. Or some obscure Excel macro that only works in compatibility mode.

Windows 10 wasn't bad, but I do agree with the sentiment that MS knows that a ton of software, both for business and personal use, are compiled for Windows so it's a natural lock-in. However, it also means they can rest on their laurels and put out half-baked features or software and it won't make a dent to their bottom line.

 

[DZero]

Windows 10 wasn't bad, but I do agree with the sentiment that MS knows that a ton of software, both for business and personal use, are compiled for Windows so it's a natural lock-in. However, it also means they can rest on their laurels and put out half-baked features or software and it won't make a dent to their bottom line.

Windows 8.1 and 10 are somehow decent. WIndows 11 is still a hog.

 

[Saylick]

Windows 8.1 and 10 are somehow decent. WIndows 11 is still a hog.

Like I said, MS makes a good OS on every other release:

Windows 95 - Meh
Windows 98 - Great
Windows ME - Meh
Windows XP - Great
Windows Vista - Meh
Windows 7 - Great
Windows 8 - Meh
Windows 10 - Great
Windows 11 - Meh

 

[Tup3x]

Like I said, MS makes a good OS on every other release:

Windows 95 - Meh
Windows 98 - Great
Windows ME - Meh
Windows XP - Great
Windows Vista - Meh
Windows 7 - Great
Windows 8 - Meh
Windows 10 - Great
Windows 11 - Meh

IMO XP was garbage while 2000 was rock solid. XP 64bit was better but ironically at the time it had the same issue that Windows ARM has now.

Also I don't think that we are going to see Exynos running Windows.

 

[DZero]

Like I said, MS makes a good OS on every other release:

Windows 95 - Meh
Windows 98 - Great
Windows ME - Meh
Windows XP - Great
Windows Vista - Meh
Windows 7 - Great
Windows 8 - Meh
Windows 10 - Great
Windows 11 - Meh

Actually...
XP OG and SP 1 = Trash
XP SP 2 onwards = Good
Windows 8 = Meh (ok)
Windows 8.1 = Interesting, but definately not meh.

 

[Thibsie]

IMO XP was garbage while 2000 was rock solid. XP 64bit was better but ironically at the time it had the same issue that Windows ARM has now.

Also I don't think that we are going to see Exynos running Windows.

True Win2K was soooooo good.
My K6-III loved it and so did I.

It ran with stupidly low amount of RAM. The only annoying thing was the time needed for suspend to disk on a laptop.

Loved that OS.

 

[Thibsie]

Same mantra every year, only that nothing ever happens.

Well, technically, if it goes from 000000.1% market share to 00000.1% it gets more relevant. But yeah...

 

[Antey]

I think that the problem with Windows on ARM is not that high end qualcomm SoCs are not competitive, they are very competitive.

The problem is that they can't compete with x86 prices and price-performance.

A big part (75%) of the android market are cheap phones (<500 USD).

And if you want WoA to have a big marketshare, you need to look at CHEAP devices sold in developing countries (india, china, rest of south asia, south america, africa).

Have you seen how BAD are the SoCs in cheap phones?

Mediatek Helio G36 is a 2023 SoC that you can still find in 2025 cheap phones (Redmi, honor, etc). it's 8 A53 cores and a very very tiny GPU from PowerVR. Thats is an insanely cheap SoC, and you put a cheap camera there and 4/6GB RAM and other things, well, that's you 2025 phone (Redmi A3, 100usd) that is selling well in developing countries with good profit.

MediaTek Dimensity 6300 is a SoC inside Galaxy A16 (200usd). 2 Cortex A76 and 6 A55. it's a mature, paid off, good enough and very very very cheap SoC.

You can't put shitty SoCs inside WoA devices. And shitty SoCs are really cheap and profitable.

Could you imagine a 2025 WoA laptop with a super cheap SoC with 8 A53 cores at 2.2 GHz that costs pennies? No, it's not possible. I think i have a laptop with Puma cores that i bought 10-12 years ago that would perform better (and it performed really bad at that time).

Even a laptop with A76? It would be AWFUL.

Chromebooks in the other hand are very cheap, they can have an ARM SoC inside and perform kind of well, in fact, they would perform better because they have much better compatibility with android apps... but OEMs prefer x86 chips because they are cheaper and most of the time BETTER. In fact, they are replacing ARM with x86, and not the other way around.

75% of the chromebooks sold in 2025 are x86.

I think the problem is that some ARM SoCs are very cheap (mediatek, unisoc, etc), but perform like ASS. but that's enough for android and it's enough if you use your phone for google, whatsapp, etc. Newer, better and competitive with x86 ones are NOT cheap. And on top of that intel and AMD are very cheap and reliable partners.

I think that WoA will remain as an option, but i doubt they will reach 10% marketshare in the future, and the fact that they can't put really cheap socs inside WoA laptops is an indication that they will never have a good marketshare even if WoA keeps improving.

my 2 cents.

 

[hemedans]

I think that the problem with Windows on ARM is not that high end qualcomm SoCs are not competitive, they are very competitive.

The problem is that they can't compete with x86 prices and price-performance.

A big part (75%) of the android market are cheap phones (<500 USD).

And if you want WoA to have a big marketshare, you need to look at CHEAP devices sold in developing countries (india, china, rest of south asia, south america, africa).

Have you seen how BAD are the SoCs in cheap phones?

Mediatek Helio G36 is a 2023 SoC that you can still find in 2025 cheap phones (Redmi, honor, etc). it's 8 A53 cores and a very very tiny GPU from PowerVR. Thats is an insanely cheap SoC, and you put a cheap camera there and 4/6GB RAM and other things, well, that's you 2025 phone (Redmi A3, 100usd) that is selling well in developing countries with good profit.

MediaTek Dimensity 6300 is a SoC inside Galaxy A16 (200usd). 2 Cortex A76 and 6 A55. it's a mature, paid off, good enough and very very very cheap SoC.

You can't put shitty SoCs inside WoA devices. And shitty SoCs are really cheap and profitable.

Could you imagine a 2025 WoA laptop with a super cheap SoC with 8 A53 cores at 2.2 GHz that costs pennies? No, it's not possible. I think i have a laptop with Puma cores that i bought 10-12 years ago that would perform better (and it performed really bad at that time).

Even a laptop with A76? It would be AWFUL.

Chromebooks in the other hand are very cheap, they can have an ARM SoC inside and perform kind of well, in fact, they would perform better because they have much better compatibility with android apps... but OEMs prefer x86 chips because they are cheaper and most of the time BETTER. In fact, they are replacing ARM with x86, and not the other way around.

75% of the chromebooks sold in 2025 are x86.

I think the problem is that some ARM SoCs are very cheap (mediatek, unisoc, etc), but perform like ASS. but that's enough for android and it's enough if you use your phone for google, whatsapp, etc. Newer, better and competitive with x86 ones are NOT cheap. And on top of that intel and AMD are very cheap and reliable partners.

I think that WoA will remain as an option, but i doubt they will reach 10% marketshare in the future, and the fact that they can't put really cheap socs inside WoA laptops is an indication that they will never have a good marketshare even if WoA keeps improving.

my 2 cents.

Not all budget soc are bad, if you check Qualcomm lineup their $150 soc snapdragon 6 gen 4 is quad A720, if you go around $300-400 you get soc like Dimensity 9400E or Snapdragon 8s gen 4, they are comparable or better than i5/Ryzen 5 in that price point.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

I do wonder how well Deckard will play Win32 VR games using an ARM SoC. Valve's documentation apparently keeps increasing its library of supported games.

That wouldn't be Windows-on-Arm, but it could become the most effective and highest performing method of running Windows apps on ARM devices.

if you go around $300-400 you get soc like Dimensity 9400E or Snapdragon 8s gen 4, they are comparable or better than i5/Ryzen 5 in that price point.

Comparable or better in what? And why would anyone compare 5W SoCs with 5G modems for smartphones to 25-80W APUs for PCs?

 

[hemedans]

Comparable or better in what? And why would anyone compare 5W SoCs with 5G modems for smartphones to 25-80W APUs for PCs?

Theoretical perfomance, many phone midrange soc nowadays can reach 6000+ geekbench perfomance which is what you get with midrange laptop nowadays, so if software is mature enough they can spam them in lowend laptop to increase adoption rate instead of focusing in highend only.

also smartphone soc with X cores are more of Laptop soc than phone soc, to get full perfomance from them power consumption is over 20W.

Check this review

Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 review: MediaTek's new power play

For years, the processor question in high-performance Chromebooks had a simple answer. Now, MediaTek is crashing the party with its new Kompanio Ultra 910. Our in-depth review of the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 reveals how this new ARM chip is ready to take on its Intel and AMD rivals.

www.notebookcheck.net

At load maximum is 37W, kompanio 910 ultra is rebrand of Dimensity 9400 in phones.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Theoretical perfomance, many phone midrange soc nowadays can reach 6000+ geekbench perfomance which is what you get with midrange laptop nowadays, so if software is mature enough they can spam them in lowend laptop to increase adoption rate instead of focusing in highend only.

also smartphone soc with X cores are more of Laptop soc than phone soc, to get full perfomance from them power consumption is over 20W.

Check this review

Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 review: MediaTek's new power play

For years, the processor question in high-performance Chromebooks had a simple answer. Now, MediaTek is crashing the party with its new Kompanio Ultra 910. Our in-depth review of the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 reveals how this new ARM chip is ready to take on its Intel and AMD rivals.

www.notebookcheck.net

At load maximum is 37W, kompanio 910 ultra is rebrand of Dimensity 9400 in phones.

The Dimensity 9400 isn't midrange, it's Mediatek's top performing (and most expensive) chip in shelves to date. And despite being a relatively large chip built on TSMC's most expensive N3E process with ARM's biggest cores and the most expensive LPDDR5X memory, it still lags AMD's geekbench multicore score for the 2 year-old 7840U, built on the older and less efficient TSMC's N4, by almost 30%. Compared to AMD's latest (but actually 1 year-old already) HX 370, the latter has almost twice the multiscore performance.


I don't see how this is comparable or better..

 

[hemedans]

The Dimensity 9400 isn't midrange, it's Mediatek's top performing (and most expensive) chip in shelves to date. And despite being a relatively large chip built on TSMC's most expensive N3E process with ARM's biggest cores and the most expensive LPDDR5X memory, it still lags AMD's geekbench multicore score for the 2 year-old 7840U, built on the older and less efficient TSMC's N4, by almost 30%. Compared to AMD's latest (but actually 1 year-old already) HX 370, the latter has almost twice the multiscore performance.


I don't see how this is comparable or better..

I put D9400 there just to show power consumption that they are no longer 5W chip.

I mentioned before those midrange soc like snapdragon 8s gen 4, dimensity 9400E, Dimensity 8400 etc, all score over 6000, some reach 7000.

7840U is not low end cpu, just look how much laptop with that cpu cost. Usual it's more than $600,

Most windows laptop sold out there have Celeron, pentium, i3, Amd Mendocino etc those drive marketshare, so if WoA need marketshare they should compete with them,

 

[DZero]

I think that the problem with Windows on ARM is not that high end qualcomm SoCs are not competitive, they are very competitive.

The problem is that they can't compete with x86 prices and price-performance.

A big part (75%) of the android market are cheap phones (<500 USD).

And if you want WoA to have a big marketshare, you need to look at CHEAP devices sold in developing countries (india, china, rest of south asia, south america, africa).

Have you seen how BAD are the SoCs in cheap phones?

Mediatek Helio G36 is a 2023 SoC that you can still find in 2025 cheap phones (Redmi, honor, etc). it's 8 A53 cores and a very very tiny GPU from PowerVR. Thats is an insanely cheap SoC, and you put a cheap camera there and 4/6GB RAM and other things, well, that's you 2025 phone (Redmi A3, 100usd) that is selling well in developing countries with good profit.

MediaTek Dimensity 6300 is a SoC inside Galaxy A16 (200usd). 2 Cortex A76 and 6 A55. it's a mature, paid off, good enough and very very very cheap SoC.

You can't put shitty SoCs inside WoA devices. And shitty SoCs are really cheap and profitable.

Could you imagine a 2025 WoA laptop with a super cheap SoC with 8 A53 cores at 2.2 GHz that costs pennies? No, it's not possible. I think i have a laptop with Puma cores that i bought 10-12 years ago that would perform better (and it performed really bad at that time).

Even a laptop with A76? It would be AWFUL.

Chromebooks in the other hand are very cheap, they can have an ARM SoC inside and perform kind of well, in fact, they would perform better because they have much better compatibility with android apps... but OEMs prefer x86 chips because they are cheaper and most of the time BETTER. In fact, they are replacing ARM with x86, and not the other way around.

75% of the chromebooks sold in 2025 are x86.

I think the problem is that some ARM SoCs are very cheap (mediatek, unisoc, etc), but perform like ASS. but that's enough for android and it's enough if you use your phone for google, whatsapp, etc. Newer, better and competitive with x86 ones are NOT cheap. And on top of that intel and AMD are very cheap and reliable partners.

I think that WoA will remain as an option, but i doubt they will reach 10% marketshare in the future, and the fact that they can't put really cheap socs inside WoA laptops is an indication that they will never have a good marketshare even if WoA keeps improving.

my 2 cents.

Well.. is Apple launches the A19 Pro on a Mac for USD 599, it will give a critical hit to Intel and AMD since they have no choices that can fully beat that chip in that prices.

And yeah, that means, more Apple quota in a mid term.

And this is NOT counting a potential Mac Mini, which with USD 399 or even more, going for USD 349 would cause even more pain to x86.