Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 launched; built on 14nm FinFET for 25% overall performance improvement

Qualcomm has just announced their addition to the Snapdragon 400 family of SoCs, the Snapdragon 450. The Snapdragon 450 succeeds yesteryear’s Snapdragon 435, but in all reality looks a lot like the Snapdragon 625 SoC that we really loved in the ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom, OPPO R9s and ASUS ZenFone 3.

The Snapdragon 450 is the first Snapdragon 400 SoC to be manufactured on the 14nm FinFET process, finally bringing the lower end Snapdragon 400 series up to speed with the rest of the Snapdragon family. It will still be based on eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores like its predecessor, but the newer manufacturing process allows the cores to be clocked higher at 1.8 GHz. This gives it a 25% improvement in CPU performance. The GPU has also received an upgrade to the Adreno 506, adding another 25% of graphics performance. Even with the beefier CPU and GPU, Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 450 will offer an extra four hours of usage and deliver a 30% reduction in power consumption when gaming. The Snapdragon 450 also supports fast charging with the Quick Charge 3.0 standard.

The ISP and USB controller are where the Snapdragon 450 received more significant upgrades. The new ISP supports a single 21MP camera, or dual 13MP cameras, an upgrade over the Snapdragon 435’s support for single 21MP camera or dual 8MP cameras. This opens up the doors to features like simulated bokeh and Qualcomm Clear Sight camera features. A new video processing block also allows devices equipped with the Snapdragon 450 to capture 1080p video at 60 fps, instead of the Snapdragon 435’s limit of 1080p @ 30 fps. The upgraded USB controller offers USB 3.0, an improvement over the USB 2.0 offered by the Snapdragon 435.

So how does the Snapdragon 450 compare to the Snapdragon 625? Very well indeed, actually. The CPU cores are clocked slightly slower, at 1.8 GHz versus 2.0 GHz, but they share the same GPU. The Snapdragon 625 still holds the upper hand in the ISP and video decode blocks. It boasts 2160p H.264 and HEVC decode, while the Snapdragon 450 is only capable of 1080p H.264 and HEVC decode. Expect to see devices based on the Snapdragon 450 by the end of 2017.

Source: AnandTech

Pokdepinion: If the Snapdragon 450 is priced at the same level as Snapdragon 430 devices, it would be quite difficult to justify the upgrade to a Snapdragon 625.