Qualcomm has released 5G-ready snapdragon 870 and Snapdragon 860 in early 2021. As of now, we have seen Snapdragon 860 only in POCO X3. However, Snapdragon 870 is an available number of smartphones. Some of those smartphones are the POCO F3, OnePlus 9R, Redmi K40, Mi 11x, Vivo X60, Black Shark 4, and more.
How well does Snapdragon 870 performance against two months younger Snapdragon 860? Let’s find out by comparing both chipsets in detail.
Before we go into the details, take a look at the specifications.
Snapdragon 870 vs 860 specifications comparison
| Snapdragon 860 | Snapdragon 870 | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 7nm | 7nm |
| Cores | 8 1x 2.96 GHz – Cortex-A76 (Kryo 485 Gold) 3x 2.42 GHz – Cortex-A76 (Kryo 485 Gold) 4x 1.8 GHz – Cortex-A55 (Kryo 485 Silver) | 8 1x 3.2 GHz – Kryo 585 Prime (Cortex-A77) 3x 2.42 GHz – Kryo 585 Gold (Cortex-A77) 4x 1.8 GHz – Kryo 585 Silver (Cortex-A55) |
| Clock speed | 2.96GHz | 3.2GHz |
| GPU | Adreno 640 | Adreno 650 |
| DirectX | 12 | 12 |
| Memory | LPDDR4X | LPDDR5 |
| Memory Speed | 2.13GHz | 2.75GHz |
| TDP | 10W | 10W |
| AI(NPU) | Hexagon 690 | Hexagon 698 |
| Storage | UFS 3.0 | UFS 3.1 |
| Modem | X24 LTE, X50 5G | X55 |
| Bluetooth | 5.1 | 5.2 |
| Release | March 2021 | January 2021 |
Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 vs Snapdragon 865
Benchmarks
AnTuTu
Snapdragon 860 powered POCO X3 Pro has scored 4,87,423 on AnTuTu benchmarks. While Xiaomi Mi 11x with snapdragon 870 has scored 6,86,149 on AnTuTu.
Geekbench 5 single-core and multi-core
On Geekbench 5, Snapdragon 870 has 1013 points in single-core and 3489 points on multi-core benchmarks. Snapdragon 860 has managed to achieve 739 points on single-core and 2653 points on multi-core benchmark.
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CPU and GPU
They both have 7nm, process-based octa-core processors. Snapdragon 870’s Cortex A-77 runs at 3.2GHz while snapdragon 860’s Cortex-A76 runs at 2.96GHz clock speed. They also have 3x 2.42GHz secondary cores along with 4×1.8GHz efficiency cores.
Snapdragon 870 has Adreno 650 GPU which runs at 587MHz GPU frequency and has 512 shading units. snapdragon 860 has Adreno 640 which runs at 675MHz GPU frequency and has 384 shading units. The Adreno 650 performance is almost 25% better than Adreno 640. Both GPU has Elite gaming feature for better performance in mobile games.
Connectivity
They both support 5G connectivity and Wi-Fi 6. However, Snapdragon 870 has an X55 modem with up to 2500mbps download speed while Snapdragon 860 has an X50 model with up to 2000 Mbps download speed. SD 860 has Bluetooth 5.1 and SD 870 has the latest Bluetooth 5.2.
AI
AI(Artificial Intelligence) is also very important nowadays. It helps improve camera performance and battery life.
The snapdragon 860 has a DSP hexagon, which has scored 52 points in AI benchmarks. And, Snapdragon 870 with DSP hexagon 698 has scored 53.8 points in AI benchmarks.
Price
Since we can’t compare chipset prices, we will be comparing smartphone prices. POCO X3 Pro (sd860) costs $308/Rs. 18,999/£270. The Mi 11x(sd870) is priced at $384/ Rs. 29,999/£304.
Verdict
It’s time for ultimate questions. So which chipset is better? Well in AnTuTu benchmarks Snapdragon 870 scores almost 40% more, in Geekbench single-core performance is 21% better and multi-core performance is 31% better compared to Snapdragon 860.
Snapdragon 870 is about 31% more expensive than Snapdragon 860. we are only talking performance-wise, the smartphone has many other aspects to consider like camera, battery life, and so on. So our clear winner is Snapdragon 870 in both, raw performance and value for money department.
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