Qualcomm's next flagship smartphone chipset, the "Snapdragon 8 Gen 4," is expected to feature the company's first custom CPU core, "Oryon," along with the "Adreno 830" GPU core. Previous reports had already suggested this GPU would deliver considerable performance, but new information indicates that improvements go beyond basic performance gains—significantly boosting GPU utilization to unlock even greater performance.
A Larger Battery May Be Needed to Draw Out the GPU's Power
According to new information posted on Weibo by Digital Chat Station, a source well-known for Qualcomm leaks, along with supplementary details posted on X by sun.dtsi, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 appears to adopt a new sliced GPU architecture along with a new memory compression algorithm. This is said to be the biggest change since the Adreno 650.
Qualcomm's Adreno GPUs are divided into multiple independent instances called "slices," each with its own pipeline, cache, and memory. This is apparently being overhauled this time. In addition, improvements to the memory compression algorithm are also reportedly underway.
The Snapdragon 8G4 GPU configuration is quite advanced, with this generation's architectural cache and memory compression technology being upgraded—internally, it's said to belong directly to the Adreno 8xx lineup. The Shanghai team developed new technology that significantly improves GPU utilization, allowing performance to be unleashed even more powerfully. No wonder more and more models are being equipped with 2K displays and large-capacity batteries.
Digital Chat Station
As a result of these sweeping changes, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 appears to have improved GPU utilization and overall performance, but this also seems to come with increased power consumption. Digital Chat Station previously mentioned the possibility that Snapdragon 8 Gen 4-equipped smartphones might feature a large 5,500mAh battery, and it now appears this circumstance is the reason behind that. There have also been previous reports offering promising information about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4's GPU performance, including reports that it has enough GPU performance to run 'Genshin Impact' at 1080p.
Qualcomm's strategy here may have been influenced by Apple's approach with the iPhone 15 Pro models, where the A17 Pro chip was enhanced to allow popular AAA games previously released on consumer game consoles—such as 'Resident Evil' and 'Assassin's Creed'—to be played directly on iPhone. Qualcomm may be aiming for a major GPU performance boost to demonstrate that similarly high-quality gameplay is possible on Android as well. However, since battery life must be maintained or improved alongside this, a larger battery inevitably becomes necessary as well.
Qualcomm's improvements aimed at competing with Apple naturally extend beyond the GPU to the entire chipset. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is expected to run at clock speeds up to 4.20GHz, achieving benchmark scores of 3000 points single-core and 10000 points multi-core, putting it on par with Apple.
Sources