I would love for AnandTech to do a good old fashion mobile SoC faceoff, with a top-tier phone using the Dimensity 9300, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and Apple's iPhone 15 Pro and its A17 Pro chip.
When I clicked this article, I was hoping to see a breakdown of what differentiated it from LPDDR5X, similar to how this article on LPDDR5X explained how it differed from regular LPDDR5.
Every once in a while somebody reinvents the idea of using your phone as a desktop that you dock and plug it into a big monitor and run big desktop apps. But that has never actually caught on. And honestly, I don't really care about the performance of the apps I do run on my phone in the real world on a tiny screen. Or to the extent that I do care, crappy developers manage to take in increments of 10x of what a new SoC can bring in increments of 10%. I'm the kind of person who hangs around reading Anandtech articles about chips all day, and I genuinely have no idea what SoC is in my current phone. My life wouldn't be made any better if it was 2x the speed. There was a "good enough" inflection point a few years back, and it all just seems like marketing puffery with no real benefit at this point. Which is part of the reason general purpose technologies like faster RAM all talk about AI as if cranking up a clock speed was somehow specific to AI. It's just generally chasing a buzzy trend, and not tied to anything end users are actually doing.
Oh, according to Vivo's own China product page for the X100 Pro, the 12GB/256GB, 16GB/256GB and 16GB/512GB options are all using LPDDR5X memory. Only the highest-end, 16GB RAM + 1TB storage option is outfitted with LPDDR5T memory.
I see a lot of Steam Deck wishes for 8 core CPUs, and I have no idea why. I think it's a total waste of silicon in a device that is extremely GPU bound. 4 cores should be enough.
But on the point of this article, yes, handheld gaming PCs will certainly benefit from higher RAM bandwidth.
The 8-core is the unit of gaming for the foreseeable future, seeing as the current-gen consoles have 8 Zen 2 cores. It might also help some of the emulators that could run on a handheld.
Also, 8 cores take up very little die area these days. Even less if it's the smaller "C" cores which are perfect for handheld devices not intended to clock high. A 16-core Zen 4C CCD with 32 MB L3 cache on TSMC 5nm is about 73mm^2. 8-core Zen 5C with less cache on 4nm would be minuscule.
Every core thats not being used takes up power, which is power that anything (like the gpu) could be using instead. And I agree with ET, MT performance is the least of the Deck's bottlenecks.
...But if they can't go beyond 128-bit, the SoCs could do with some more system level cache.
This comment shows a misunderstanding of computing power. A 4-core Core i3 12100F beats on average an 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X in games. Four Zen 5c or even Zen 4c cores are likely to beat 8 Zen 2 cores available in consoles.
If 4 extra cores take an extra 10 mm2 and raise gaming performance on average by 5% and reduce battery life by 5%, then that's wasted 10 mm2 in my book. Performance will be better served by using that area for a GPU cache or GPU cores, or for reducing the chip's price.
@ ET: I would agree, but I also think this is just another reason why Valve wants to wait and why I agree with that. In another 1-2 years, they could put in 8 Zen 5c cores in a Deck 2, on a TSMC N3 process node. Those 8 cores, on that node, would then take up less space and consume less power than the current 4 Zen 2 cores do now. And Valve would be massively increasing IPC per core, plus doubling the core count. That is what they mean by waiting for huge generational upgrade in perf & perf-per-watt.
Even if 8 Zen 5c (or whatever) cores on N3 will take less power than 4 Zen 2 cores on N6, 4 cores will still take less power. If 8 cores have very little benefit (and you've offered no argument that they'd be of benefit), then there's no point in having them.
I also don't see why Valve will use N3. Valve is trying to keep the device cost reasonably low, and on the processor level this implies a node that's not state-of-the-art and a chip that's as small as possible, while still providing reasonable performance. The Steam Deck APUs do that well, and I don't see a reason for Valve to change this formula.
Are there errors in the article? We keep jumping between LPDDR5T, LPDDR6, and LPDDR6T.
I *assume* the first is correct, that this is version of LPDDR5 (essentially same voltages, timing structure etc) and that LPDDR6, while it's being worked on and whatever it may bring in terms of new algorithms, is not yet with us?
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NextGen_Gamer - Tuesday, November 14, 2023 - link
I would love for AnandTech to do a good old fashion mobile SoC faceoff, with a top-tier phone using the Dimensity 9300, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and Apple's iPhone 15 Pro and its A17 Pro chip.PeachNCream - Tuesday, November 14, 2023 - link
Feb 2022 was the last time I was able to find an AT article that included phone benchmarks.https://www.anandtech.com/show/17246/handson-with-...
Not sure they still do that sort of thing for the handset market anymore.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
Right now we do not (as much as I'd like to be).mode_13h - Thursday, November 16, 2023 - link
When I clicked this article, I was hoping to see a breakdown of what differentiated it from LPDDR5X, similar to how this article on LPDDR5X explained how it differed from regular LPDDR5.https://www.anandtech.com/show/16851/jedec-announc...
I suppose you can understand my disappointment.
wrosecrans - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
Every once in a while somebody reinvents the idea of using your phone as a desktop that you dock and plug it into a big monitor and run big desktop apps. But that has never actually caught on. And honestly, I don't really care about the performance of the apps I do run on my phone in the real world on a tiny screen. Or to the extent that I do care, crappy developers manage to take in increments of 10x of what a new SoC can bring in increments of 10%.I'm the kind of person who hangs around reading Anandtech articles about chips all day, and I genuinely have no idea what SoC is in my current phone. My life wouldn't be made any better if it was 2x the speed. There was a "good enough" inflection point a few years back, and it all just seems like marketing puffery with no real benefit at this point. Which is part of the reason general purpose technologies like faster RAM all talk about AI as if cranking up a clock speed was somehow specific to AI. It's just generally chasing a buzzy trend, and not tied to anything end users are actually doing.
NextGen_Gamer - Tuesday, November 14, 2023 - link
Oh, according to Vivo's own China product page for the X100 Pro, the 12GB/256GB, 16GB/256GB and 16GB/512GB options are all using LPDDR5X memory. Only the highest-end, 16GB RAM + 1TB storage option is outfitted with LPDDR5T memory.mastomi - Tuesday, November 14, 2023 - link
imagine 8 core zen5c with 680m with this on package like apple m series. it would be nice upgrade for steam deckET - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
I see a lot of Steam Deck wishes for 8 core CPUs, and I have no idea why. I think it's a total waste of silicon in a device that is extremely GPU bound. 4 cores should be enough.But on the point of this article, yes, handheld gaming PCs will certainly benefit from higher RAM bandwidth.
nandnandnand - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
The 8-core is the unit of gaming for the foreseeable future, seeing as the current-gen consoles have 8 Zen 2 cores. It might also help some of the emulators that could run on a handheld.Also, 8 cores take up very little die area these days. Even less if it's the smaller "C" cores which are perfect for handheld devices not intended to clock high. A 16-core Zen 4C CCD with 32 MB L3 cache on TSMC 5nm is about 73mm^2. 8-core Zen 5C with less cache on 4nm would be minuscule.
brucethemoose - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
Every core thats not being used takes up power, which is power that anything (like the gpu) could be using instead. And I agree with ET, MT performance is the least of the Deck's bottlenecks....But if they can't go beyond 128-bit, the SoCs could do with some more system level cache.
Dante Verizon - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
Exactly. 4-6cores is enough in the limited TDP gaming scenario, the iGPU there is what does the magic.ET - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
This comment shows a misunderstanding of computing power. A 4-core Core i3 12100F beats on average an 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X in games. Four Zen 5c or even Zen 4c cores are likely to beat 8 Zen 2 cores available in consoles.If 4 extra cores take an extra 10 mm2 and raise gaming performance on average by 5% and reduce battery life by 5%, then that's wasted 10 mm2 in my book. Performance will be better served by using that area for a GPU cache or GPU cores, or for reducing the chip's price.
NextGen_Gamer - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
@ ET: I would agree, but I also think this is just another reason why Valve wants to wait and why I agree with that. In another 1-2 years, they could put in 8 Zen 5c cores in a Deck 2, on a TSMC N3 process node. Those 8 cores, on that node, would then take up less space and consume less power than the current 4 Zen 2 cores do now. And Valve would be massively increasing IPC per core, plus doubling the core count. That is what they mean by waiting for huge generational upgrade in perf & perf-per-watt.ET - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
Even if 8 Zen 5c (or whatever) cores on N3 will take less power than 4 Zen 2 cores on N6, 4 cores will still take less power. If 8 cores have very little benefit (and you've offered no argument that they'd be of benefit), then there's no point in having them.I also don't see why Valve will use N3. Valve is trying to keep the device cost reasonably low, and on the processor level this implies a node that's not state-of-the-art and a chip that's as small as possible, while still providing reasonable performance. The Steam Deck APUs do that well, and I don't see a reason for Valve to change this formula.
scineram - Tuesday, November 21, 2023 - link
Since Zen 5 uses N4 but 5c uses N3, I wonder if they would go with 4c instead of porting 5c to N4.name99 - Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - link
Are there errors in the article?We keep jumping between LPDDR5T, LPDDR6, and LPDDR6T.
I *assume* the first is correct, that this is version of LPDDR5 (essentially same voltages, timing structure etc) and that LPDDR6, while it's being worked on and whatever it may bring in terms of new algorithms, is not yet with us?
pinchies - Sunday, November 19, 2023 - link
@Anton Shilov can you please fix the typos?? It's quite confusing.