Snapdragon 800 or Tegra 4 powered..?


Garrett

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I know there aren't any meaningful choices yet (unless you consider the Nvidia Shield a contender) but I'm planning on a new Tablet later this year & have read a few articles that say whilst the Snapdragon is impressive, Tegra 4 is winning as far as the raw performance/benchmarks are concerned.

I appreciate it's generally a whole different ball game in terms of real world performance & there's also the power draw consideration, but I'm liking what I've heard of the Tegra 4 so far.

What do you guys think..?
 
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Snapdragon if you want to play.

I don't like the fact that Tegra 4 doesn't support OpenGL ES 3.0.

It's just one argument but for Gaming it might be important.

Especially if you want to try out Dolphin.
 
Snapdragon if you want to play.

I don't like the fact that Tegra 4 doesn't support OpenGL ES 3.0.

It's just one argument but for Gaming it might be important.

Especially if you want to try out Dolphin.
I wasn't aware of the lack of OpenGL on Tegra 4.. I did a fair amount of gaming on my Nexus 7 so whichever allowed the most options for gaming (especially as far as emulation is concerned) would probably be the deciding factor for me.

I wouldn't ever expect Dolphin to run well enough to be playable on either of these soc's, but have to admit the prospect of portable Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness etc has me kinda giddy..
 
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Right.

OpenGL ES 2.0 works.

It's just the fact that maybe some games might benefit in the future from OpenGL ES 3.0.
 
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Snapdragon if you want to play.


I don't like the fact that Tegra 4 doesn't support OpenGL ES 3.0.


It's just one argument but for Gaming it might be important.


Especially if you want to try out Dolphin.
you made me smile with that post.


To answer the OP, I would go x86 if you can. (Google: Samsung ATIV Q) Battery wont be AS good as ARM, but at 9hrs I think you'll be ok. While I love ARM, it will still be a few more years before it can match x86 processors (both from a software library standpoint and a speed/dollar spent standpoint)


So, x86 if you can. Snapdragon 800 of you need ARM
 
Also, its expected that Qualcomm will make a big push to get Open GL ES 3.0 stacks inside AOSP to encourage developers to make games taking advantage of the "rich" call library. This meams that while Tegra 5, Exynos 5 will support OGLES3.0, the only current gen SoCs to support it are Snapdragon. In order to "future proof" your tablet, get the snapdragon (unless ofcourse you can manage with an x86, in which case get that)
 
Unless you want to eventually play Gamecube games at 20% speed instead of 5% speed I doubt OGL ES 3.0 support will make that much of a difference. Not for a while anyway.
 
I might be a bit biased since I work for Qualcomm, but Snapdragon all the way. Unless you use the tablet purely for CPU and GPU intensive tasks I doubt you'd notice a difference (if the Tegra 4 is faster. 5 minutes of surfing the web and I haven't found any definitive sources saying it is).  The thing about battery life is that it can be a bit harder to quantify how important it is until you've purchased your device and you -need- the extra battery. Plus we make funny videos like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3f-OoUG1xw
 
To answer the OP, I would go x86 if you can. (Google: Samsung ATIV Q) Battery wont be AS good as ARM, but at 9hrs I think you'll be ok.  While I love ARM, it will still be a few more years before it can match x86 processors (both from a software library standpoint and a speed/dollar spent standpoint)
That's an Ultrabook convertible that is almost guaranteed to retail for significantly over 1,000USD.  Indeed there's a German leak that puts it at 1,599 Euros.  All with the graphics chipset game publishers take pains to try to clarify and emphasize they do not support and a battery life of up to 9 hours, which in practice probably means more like 4-6 hours of actual use.

Also it should be noted proper laptop/tablet convertibles predate the iPad and BlueStacks is supported by AMD and Intel.  Anyone seriously considering buying such a thing at that kind of pricing has more money then sense. 

P.S.

The Cortex A15 crushes the in order Atom design core to core and clock to clock in Phoronix's testing.  So while that's bottom rung, ARM has matched x86 processors.  What it's not doing is going after the double digit Watts processor realm.

[-]

If you're going to drag x86 into a discussion at least go with something like an AMD Jaguar equipped APU that's liable to have reasonable driver support and be at a pricepoint that's not entirely outlandish.
 
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Sorry to upset you oh great one. I was giving an example of a device he might like, not "get this or else you're stupid xd"
 
Sorry to upset you oh great one. I was giving an example of a device he might like, not "get this or else you're stupid xd"

To answer the OP, I would go x86 if you can. (Google: Samsung ATIV Q) Battery wont be AS good as ARM, but at 9hrs I think you'll be ok. While I love ARM, it will still be a few more years before it can match x86 processors (both from a software library standpoint and a speed/dollar spent standpoint)
So, x86 if you can. Snapdragon 800 of you need ARM
One of these things isn't like the other.

If I am unfairly persecuting you for calling you out on hawking something unrelated to the thread with bad information and you just meant x86 devices that can run Android apps, why weren't you hawking Bluestacks? 

You know that Android compatibility layer that Intel and AMD are both backing?  The one that can basically run on any x86 hardware and is unrelated to a hypervisor or dual boot setup like Samsung is doing?  And if you're big on that approach why call attention solely to that device rather something like the x86 Android, related L4 projects, or Virtual machine possibilities like those built into Windows 8?
 
Unless you want to eventually play Gamecube games at 20% speed instead of 5% speed I doubt OGL ES 3.0 support will make that much of a difference. Not for a while anyway.
Thats interesting mate. I was watching the Dolphin project and hoping for good things with the upcoming Snapgragon 800. I wasn't expecting full speed of course.  

I guess we are still a couple of generations of mobile processor away then?

In the meantime just to wet your appetite here's a snapshot of Wind Waker running in the software renderer on my note 2... It did take about 5 min to get to that opening screen mind lol.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ih9mebh08sbeely/Wind%20Waker.png

Keep up the good work and congrats on the progress of DraStic for Android.. At least I will be able to console myself with some DS games while we are waiting for hardware to catch up :)
 
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Its not about how powerful they are now, its about how free they are for the future.

You wont enjoy being stuck with your graphics invariably tied to some old linuxkernel, in turn preventing you from using it for anything modern down the road when its deprecated and your programs have newer dependencies. Try http://makeplaylive.com/
 
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