Qualcomm officially announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 at the Snapdragon Summit 2022. The new chipset was widely anticipated to bring forth a number of improvements over its predecessor. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset was a bit of a disappointment for Qualcomm as it had overheating issues. Qualcomm is looking to gain back its reputation with the release of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and it solved a number of issues, including the heating issue. With the release of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, many people are wondering what are the differences between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
Differences between Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
#1. CPU Performance
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 wasn’t very good when it came to CPU performance. For instance, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 featured 1x Cortex-X2 core clocked at 3.0Hz, 4x Cortex-A510 cores clocked a 1.8GHz, and 3x Cortex-A710 cores clocked at 2.5GHz. The chipset was based on Samsung’s 4nm fabrication process, which was causing it to overheat even when performing basic tasks while it wasn’t power efficient either.
On the other hand, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be based on TSMC’s 4nm fabrication process, which is more cost-efficient than the predecessor. It is an octa-core processor with 1x Cortex-X3 core clocked at 3.2GHz, 3x Cortex-A510 cores clocked at 2.0GHz, and 4x Cortex-A715 cores at 2.8GHz.
The CPU performance has been improved by 35%, which is a major difference. Not only is there an improvement in CPU performance but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is 40% more power efficient too, primarily due to TSMC’s node.
#2. GPU Performance
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will bring massive improvements to the GPU. It’ll bring the Adreno 740 GPU, which is faster than the Adreno 730 on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The former is capable of delivering 25% better performance than the latter while consuming 40% less power. It means that you’ll be able to play games on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered smartphones without worrying about overheating or the battery dying out soon.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will also come with support for the latest UFS 3.0 storage whereas the predecessor only supported UFS 3.1. The RAM support on the Gen 2 chipset is superior as well. It comes with support for LPDDR5X RAM that clocks in at 4200MHz whereas the Gen 1 supported LPDDR5 RAM that clocks in at 3200MHz.
#3. Display and camera support
Coming to the display support, both of the chipsets will support display resolutions of 4K@60Hz and QHD+@144Hz. The primary difference here is that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will support HDR Vivid whereas the Gen 1 doesn’t.
Qualcomm has improved the camera ISP hugely with the Spectra Cognitive ISP, a hardware accelerator for computer vision, and triple 18-bit ISPs. With Bokeh Engine 2, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be able to shoot 8K HDR videos and capture 10-bit HEIF photos.
#4. AI and ML
Qualcomm has made great improvements in its Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning departments with the latest chipset. The AI processor has an upgraded architecture, which is 4.35x faster than the AI engine on the predecessor. The new Hexagon processor will offer 60% better performance per watt while also performing INT4 operations.
