Qualcomm launches Snapdragon 805 with Adreno 420 GPU in time for Google I/O

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 805 was announced towards the **end of last year** and the first device sporting it was expected to be released at CES. That never happened, but we got to know that the new 805 SoC would house a brand new Adreno 420 GPU. And now, **ahead of Google I/O** , Qualcomm has released a white paper detailing the Adreno 420 GPU. [caption id=“attachment_226313” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Adreno 420 is the first GPU based on the Adreno 400 architecture and supports DirectX 11.2[/caption] Adreno 420 is the first SoC class GPU based on the Adreno 400 architecture. This is a big jump from previous generation Adreno GPUs for the simple reason that it not only supports OpenGL ES 3.1 but also desktop class Direct3D 11.2 which brings hardware tessellation, geometry shading, improved texturing, among other things on the mobile platform. [caption id=“attachment_226316” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Comparison between Snapdragon 800 and 805[/caption] On the OpenGL ES side of things, the Snapdragon 805 will support Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) which is an OpenGL next generation compression technology which helps with improving, unifying and simplifying the use of compressed textured on mobile platforms. [caption id=“attachment_226315” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Samsung Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE is the first to sport Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 and is a Korea-only device[/caption] Samsung has announced the Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A, a Korea-only launch, which will be the first phone to be housing Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 SoC. The S5 Broadband with the Snapdragon 805 will have Krait 450 CPUs clocked at 2.5GHz instead of Krait 400 CPU. The phone sports a 5.1-inch 2560x1440p display and will have 3GB of RAM similar to that of the Galaxy Note 3.   With Google I/O about to **begin tomorrow** , expect to see some demos showcasing Adreno 420 GPU’s gaming prowess. Sure, the low power nature of mobile devices will definitely not give equivalent amount of gaming as seen on the desktop GPUs, but as compared to the older Adreno 330 GPU, it should be a significant improvement if the graph below from Anandtech is to be believed. [caption id=“attachment_226314” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Comparison chart from Anandtech showing the Snapdragon 805’s performance against competition (Image: Anandtech)[/caption] **NVIDIA's Tegra K1** which was announced earlier this year, is expected to be seen in the **rumoured Nexus 9 tablet** codenamed Volantis developed by HTC.  It will be interesting to see how the Snapdragon 805 performs against the NVIDIA Tegra K1, if it is indeed showcased tomorrow. Keep watching this space.