Comments Locked

42 Comments

Back to Article

  • prussian - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    Looking at the pic CPU cores appear to be 2+6 rather than 4+4 configuration.
  • WPX00 - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    Previous rumors pegged it as a 2x6 config as well. The Qualcomm website doesn't mention it though.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    I was briefed on 4+4 configuration by Qualcomm - the slide came from a later update and I hadn't noticed. Updated the spec table.
  • Wardrive86 - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    Isn't Kryo 260 Gold based on Cortex a73?
  • mczak - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    Yes indeed it's based on a73, not a72.
    Well actually you can as well say it's based on a53... Because QC simply says "8x Kryo 260" - so it refers to both the little a53 as well as the big a73 cores - talk about nonsense naming...
    Although sometimes they also refer to "kryo cpu" as a whole which would make a bit more sense...
  • Plumplum - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    Memory is probably 2x16bits on S660...you can see it on AnTuTu Memory test an detailed geekbench scores that S660 and S835 dont use the same 2x32bits 1866Mhz memory
  • Wardrive86 - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    660 does have dual 16 bit memory channels
  • Wardrive86 - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    I agree it isn't the best naming scheme. It is pretty easy to determine between the Gold and Silver monikers, but they do often refer to all of them as just Kryo xxx
  • Plumplum - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    In my opinion, Kryo is only a name.
    You can take all the detailed singlecore's score in geekbench of P60 and S660, divide them by the frequencies and you will get...the same results as memories are close : 2x16bits 1800Mhz and 1866Mhz

    You can do the same with 835...only memory results are differents due to 2x32bits higher bandwidth!

    Kryo 260 is nothing more than 4A73+4A53, with 2x16bits RAM management.
    Kryo 280 is nothing more than 4A73+4A53, with 2x32bits RAM

    But people think : "waouw, it's Kryo custom cores, it's better than standard Arm", it isn't
  • Wardrive86 - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    Qualcomm does have some scheduler "secret sauce" that does wonders even if the cores are vanilla..SD625 through their high end SoCs are proof of this. They also have amazing GPU drivers now, it was a different case in the past but now I don't know of better GPU drivers in the mobile space. Qualcomm currently also has the best effciency in the mid and high end. Maybe alot of it is in the "uncore" maybe not. It has put them on top and I'm sure a LOT of customization went into those aspects alone, so to me that is Kryo..I.e...better than stock ARM
  • serendip - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    That efficiency is why I keep going for Snapdragon chips even if Qualcomm's support policies suck. I have SD650 and SD625 devices and they're both fast and more efficient than equivalent Mediatek chips.
  • KatouMegumi - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    SDM710 is Dual-core Kryo360 Gold and Hexa-core Kryo360 Silver.
  • piroroadkill - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    I know Qualcomm's been doing it for a while, but I can't help thinking back to: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/02/qualcomm_m...
  • .vodka - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    A75 and A55 cores? Interesting. Is this configured as big.LITTLE or is it based around the new DynamIQ setup?
  • Wardrive86 - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    DynamIQ, notice the A55 core count
  • Dragonstongue - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    cool and all, am sure performance and potentially battery life will be quite decent
    however
    heat issues...had many folks use the "latest and greatest" as far as Big.little, I think they need to declock the little a bit more so a 2:1 ratio or even a 3:1 (so if 2200 for the Big, 1100 for the little) to conserve as much battery power as possible and to not have to deal with phone getting HOT when just casually using it.

    Mom just got her "new phone" and she said compared to her old LG model it is snappier but gets uncomfortably warm for no real reason where her old phone was cool as a cucumber.

    I have always really liked the concept of big core working with little ones (for GPU AMD did exactly this with VLIW designs) a "master" with a bunch of smaller "helpers" it lends itself very well for mobile processors, but not so good if it means that much extra heat cooking your hand and the battery ^.^
  • peevee - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    "I think they need to declock the little a bit more so a 2:1 ratio or even a 3:1 (so if 2200 for the Big, 1100 for the little) to conserve as much battery power as possible"

    Little are actually more power efficient than big at the same clock. And unlike Intel/AMD CPUs, these frequencies are like "Turbo", not really you get running all of them all day long. Note "up to".
  • jOHEI - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    well that shows you dont know much about how big.Little has been implemented (now Dynamiq)

    1st- the flagship 845 (quad A75+quad A55) doesnt even get hot during normal operation and the power used are very good.

    2- frequency is determined by Voltage, P=C*V^2*f, but the imposed frequency depends on the voltage so these companies determine the maximum frequency depending on the power draw that they want and performance required.

    the A75 core uses 1W at maximum frequency (@2.8), the little cores should use between 100-250 mW at maximum frequency.

    so Power consumption of this CPU @ max load should be around 3W maximum. + 3W for the GPU at maximum load giving a power consumption of 6W at maximum performance, something hard to get as games on mobile dont use max out the CPU.

    Comparing with other SoC's, the Kirin 970's GPU uses 6W at maximum load and those phones dont get Hot usually.

    in 2015 things were different though, with the 810 was super garbage (13W used i think at maximum?) using the 20nm process.

    The market has matured so it will be hard to find any SoC that is as bad as 2015 SoC's were.
  • jjj - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    "The Snapdragon 710 fixes this branding issue of having quite capable SoCs with large CPU cores grouped together with lower tiered SoCs in the lower numbered SKUs in the 600 series such as the Snapdragon 625 or 635."

    Took some effort to ignore the 636 and come up with that reasoning! And you know very well that the 10$ and above SoC, going forward, will have big cores.
    They try to create value through just branding and you bend over backwards to enable that. There is nothing going on here, just marketing tricks. No idea why you felt the need to sell out and come up with factual inaccurate justifications.

    At least it's quite funny that while trying to justify their behavior , Qualcomm's deceptive tricks burned you too and you list the wrong number of cores.
  • bug77 - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    The only problem I see is price. Qualcomm's mid-range chipsets (SD6xx) have traditionally found a hard time getting into proper mid-range phones (priced at $200-250).
  • SirPerro - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    How so? Moto G series, Xiaomi A1, Nokia 6 etc...
  • bug77 - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    All released at least two years after SD625 was released.
  • agoyal - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    Will this power the Goggle’s rumoured mid range phone??
  • Valantar - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    This is quite interesting. Finally there are true mid-range mobile chips showing up that aren't "low end but with a useless amount of cores". I would very much like to see this implemented in "premium" (as opposed to "flagship") models going forward. Seeing how I don't game on my phone (ugh, touch controls!), I don't need the GPU power, and the CPU part here looks excellent. My Oneplus 3T won't need replacing for a while still, but id love for there to be options of this caliber around when it does.
  • Death666Angel - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    The Snapdragon 65x, 636, 660 were all already big core / little core mid range SoCs. This is just a marketing rebranding. Which I appreciate, since the 600-series chips are not very consistent in their performance behaviour to numbering scheme, even if others disagree. The problem so far for me was that they often cost as much as last years flagships on sale, which meant that I was better off looking for those deals than getting a new 652 phone.
  • serendip - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link

    A phone with a 652 would be almost as fast yet more efficient than last year's flagship. I've given up on flagships because of the small batteries and higher prices compared to midrangers. I don't need a dual bokeh camera but I do need 2-day battery life.
  • Death666Angel - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link

    Yes, I know, Antutu isn't great, but it's the thing I found first:
    S652 CPU Score: 79636 | GPU Score: 17365
    S829 CPU Score: 136383 | GPU Score: 55098
    Sure, there might be some optimization differences and whatnot, but not enough to make up that massive difference. And that is S652 vs the flagship SoC from 2 years ago. I doubt the efficiency will be in its favor, considering S652 is 28nm and 820 is 14nm.
    I got my HTC U Ultra with a S821 and 64GB for 222€ on sale a few weeks ago brand new. Cheapest S6xx smartphone is Redmi Note 3 Pro for 130€ (2GB RAM / 16GB ROM). After that it is 200€+ for S6xx A72+ phones and it's 200€+ for S820/821/835 phones.
    If you want 2 day battery life that is fine and you will likely get that from niche phones with large batteries more so than from all S650/652/660 phones. But don't spread such nonsense, please.
  • serendip - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link

    For average daily usage like web surfing and for quick app loading, the SD652/660 are almost as fast as the 835. If you're gaming or you have a benchmark fetish, then an 835/845 will always be faster.

    I'm using a SD650 phone with a 4800 mAh battery and it easily lasts for 2 days with heavy usage. You can't get an SD835/845 phone with a huge battery and long runtime, they simply don't exist.
  • syxbit - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    There are errors all over this article. AnandTech has really gone down hill.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    We always strive for technical accuracy here. What's wrong, so that we may fix it?
  • jOHEI - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    Im not him but:
    "microarchitectural upgrade over last year’s A72 based Kryo 260" its A73 not A72.

    "Overall the Snapdragon 710 really does seem like a toned down 845 variant which actually balances out some important aspects. It’s especially good to see the mid-range being pushed into the 10nm manufacturing node as that will give a generation power efficiency jump for the relevant devices." to reach that conclusion is a bit weird as this SoC wont have the performance of the 835 even.

    "The Snapdragon 710 fixes this branding issue of having quite capable SoCs with large CPU cores grouped together as the 700 series, while the lower tiered SoCs such as the Snapdragon 625 or 635 remain in the 600 series ."

    The issue with the branding is the successors to the 630 already have big cores (636).
    A sucessor to the 636 should be more powerfull and more efficient than any of the 600 series.

    So theres an issue with branding, either share the last "40 numbers" between low end midrange and higher end, or complete the seperation.

    obviously the choice was to low end midrange be put in the 660 and up while higher up midrange be in the 700 series.

    qualcomm is running out of names for their mid range chips without confusing the consumer (which they already trick by naming their cores Kryo without the Gold and Silver distinction )
  • leo_sk - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    Wouldnt 2+4 configuration be cheaper? Do the 2 extra little cores provide any advantage? I have used 650 and 652, and couldnt find any difference in real world usage, hence little sceptical
  • peevee - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    Little cores don't cost much. And of course they do provide benefits if the memory subsystem can deliver.
  • peevee - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link

    "but the Kryo 360 Cortex-A75 based CPUs are microarchitectural upgrade over last year’s A72 based Kryo 260"

    But in the table it is indicated that Kryo 260 is A73-based. So which is it?
  • Wardrive86 - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link

    Any idea on what the L1-L3 cache sizes are?
  • unrulycow - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link

    Google, please make me a reasonably priced Pixel phone using one of these. Thanks
  • Wardrive86 - Sunday, May 27, 2018 - link

    The more I think about the 710 the more attractive it becomes. Single threaded performance should be on par with the SD835, multicore performance just below it. An Adreno 600 series GPU north of 300 Gflops. Second generation 10 nm lithography should provide fantastic thermals and battery life for this level of performance. 2 very beefy A75s coupled with 6 a55s at that clock should be very efficient. Ide be willing to gamble you could get comparable battery life to SD625, just with substantially better performance. Make for a great gaming/emulation chip!
  • SarruKen - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link

    very true, the cpu performance and the efficiency will be top notch. But the gpu performance will still be under the great adreno 530, which was implemented almost 3 years ago..so it wont be good enoght for lets say ps2 emulations
  • Wardrive86 - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link

    Raw GFlops will be weaker than Adreno 530, but memory bandwidth should be better..same bandwidth for RAM + L4 system cache. I'm sure Adreno 600 also has better color and texture compression capabilities that should further increase bandwidth efficiency compared to any Adreno 500 series GPUs. Remember the developer of Damon PS2 fully plans and develops against a Snapdragon 660, so this would be a great chip for that as well as Dolphin.
  • anonym - Saturday, June 9, 2018 - link

    Memory I/O spec in this article is wrong. Memory channel width is 16bit x 2 for both 710 and 660. Different from 16bit x 4 for 820.

    Andrei, please check product brief for snapdragon 710 that pointed out explicitly.
  • SnowFlake9 - Friday, June 8, 2018 - link

    Hey Andrei, please do a full review of the performance of this chipset if possible, like the ones that you do for the flagship 8xx SoCs. Please make comparisons with SD820/1, SD835, SD660, and Kirin 970. It's always a pleasure reading your detailed analysis. Looking forward to one of the SD 710 soon. Thanks.
  • SarruKen - Monday, August 27, 2018 - link

    I did some easy ( but I know, not necessary meaningful ) math based on the 3dmark and antutu 7 scores of the adreno 512, 530, 616 and 630, and I came to the conclusion that the adreno 616 inside the Snapdragon 710 has 192 ALUs ( postulating the fact that the clockspeed is 750 MHz ) and the adreno 630 - 384 ( also postulating that it runs at 670 MHz ). So double the ALUs, just like in the past years where we had 256 for flagships, and 128, respectively, for midrangers.
    Let's take an example: on Sling Shot OpenGL ES 3.0 Unlimited 2560x1440, adreno 512 does 2068 on average. Now with a 35% boost, the 616 should do 2791. Now we have to postulate that the 512 has: 850 MHz clockspeed and 128 ALUs and that the 616 has 750 MHz clockspeed and 192 ALUs. 2068x192: 128 = 3102. 3102x750:850= 2732. See? The 35% claimed improvement is possible this way, but, of courses, only if we deny any other architectural ( like IPC ) improvement.
    Now the 540 compared to the 630: 540 does on average 5990 on the same benchmark, while the 630 does 7940 ( source: notebookcheck .com). Let's take a look: 5990x384:256= 8985. 8985x670:712= 8454. So a bit less, true. But we have to take into consideration thermal throttling due to the TDP limit or maybe even memory bandwidth limitations. Even on notebookcheck the maximum score achieved for the 630 is 8451 ( so not the average I have used to the rest of the scores ), so almost the exact result we got using the rule of the three!

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now