It beats Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, according to released benchmarks

Mar 13, 2013 08:54 GMT  ·  By

Making a comparison between the NVIDIA Tegra 4 SoC (system-on-chip) and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 mobile platform isn't easy, since neither chip is actually out, but The Linley Group claim to have managed it.

Both NVIDIA and Qualcomm have released benchmark results for their respective processors. And since Tegra 4 and Snapdragon 800 are the strongest mobile platforms, there is great interest in finding which is better.

Both companies are trying to win over customers, so that they may have a ripe buyer community when tablets based on their inventions come out later this year.

At the moment, it is believed that Tegra 4 is the stronger one, although Qualcomm could have an advantage in terms of power efficiency.

“This performance takes aim at Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon processors. Nvidia offered a wide range of benchmark results that clearly showed Tegra 4 leading both the APQ8064 and (judging from our estimates) the forthcoming Snapdragon 800,” said Kevin Krewell of The Linley Group.

“Based on these estimates, even Qualcomm’s best processor, which is due to enter production at about the same time as Tegra 4, won’t surpass Nvidia in these tests.”

Given this conclusion, NVIDIA's Wayne will most likely cause a sweeping storm on the tablet market, but less of an impact on the smartphone front.

“Snapdragon will challenge Tegra 4’s performance in smartphones, but in tablets, Tegra 4 will really shine,” he said.

Qualcomm might still have trouble, however. While the Tegra 4 is overpowered, the Tegra 4i is not.

Unveiled last month (February 2013), Tegra 4i is a weaker version of Tegra 4, but with LTE (long-term evolution broadband). It has four Cortex-A9 cores, a power saver core (runs low-scale applications and keeps the others inactive when possible, for energy saving), and a 60-core GPU. See the specs here.