Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus: New processor for gaming and VR
Qualcomm has introduced an unusual update in the middle of the life cycle of its Snapdragon 855 platform. It debuts on Asus ROG Phone II.
Snapdragon 855 Plus increases the performance of the previous Snapdragon 855 bringing the operating frequency of the Kryo 485 eight-core CPU to 2.96GHz against the 2.84GHz frequency of the previous version. Furthermore, the Adreno 640 GPU will benefit from a 15% performance improvement.
The changes were introduced expressly in a gaming perspective, especially with regard to the GPU. The increase in GPU performance derives primarily from the fact that the operating frequency goes from 585 MHz to 672 MHz.
There is also talk of a series of software optimizations starting from the Vulkan 1.1 driver support, which should guarantee an improvement of 20% compared to Open GL ES. Qualcomm also improves AI Engine, which is the chip that processes artificial intelligence algorithms now in the fourth generation and capable of processing 7 TOPs (trillion operations per second).
There is still no 5G integration, as even the new processor reaches the maximum to connect to LTE networks. As previously leaked, instead, it will be Snapdragon 865, or the next-generation platform, the first to integrate also an X50 5G modem.
Qualcomm expects the first smartphone with Snapdragon 855 Plus to enter the market in the second half of 2019. The first to use it will be Asus with the newly revealed ROG Phone II.
