Friday, January 14, 2022

The New Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

Computing processing power matters to me because I do many processor-intensive tasks.  When I bought a 2009 iMac with a Core-i7 860 processor, it was one of the fastest computers you could buy.  Today it gets stomped by most of the computers on the market.

The previous decade was a period with only marginal advancement in computer microprocessor power.  People were bragging about 10 and 20% improvements.  However, more developments were being made in mobile processors, especially with Apple.

Nevertheless, since 2020 we have seen some amazing progress.

This might not matter to most people, but the latest and greatest Android smartphone processor is 25% more powerful than my 2017 desktop iMac running a 3.4 GHz i5-7500 with active cooling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syJ3xn4q9xo&t=80s

My 2017 computer has a 959 Geekbench Single-Core Score and a 3072 Multi-Core Score.

The Apple A15 Bionic found on the iPhone 13 received a single-core score of 1732 and a multi-core score of 4685.  

The M1 chip used in the latest Apple laptops has scores of 1717 and 7328.  The M1-max chip in Apple's new desktop computers has scores of 1749 and 11542.

I have no interest in buying another Apple computer, but I am impressed with their products.  It is only an amount of time before the competition catches up.  

However, I am interested in the AMD Rizen 7000 processors that will be released in the second half of this year.  This will be the first time that all the new AMD processors will have built-in graphics, possibly eliminating the need to buy a separate graphics card.