The Snapdragon 670 was officially launched yesterday by Qualcomm because seeing the significant improvements that mid-range smartphones are shipping with, it is impossible to ignore them in the market now that flagship sales of mobile devices have started to slow down.
Snapdragon 670 vs Snapdragon 710: Clock Speed Differences, Technical Details
Not surprisingly, the Snapdragon 670 is made on the same 10nm LPP architecture as the Snapdragon 710, so it will not be difficult to believe that both chipsets feature the same cores from Qualcomm’s Kryo 360 custom technology. However, the only difference between the Snapdragon 670 and the Snapdragon 710 that you will find here are the clock speeds.
For example, both the chipsets feature a 2 + 6 CPU configuration, and both of them are running two high-performance Kryo 360 cores based on ARM’s Cortex-A75 processor while the remaining six cores also belong to Kryo 360 but are focused more on efficiency and are based on ARM’s Cortex-A55 IP. However, the difference lies in the clock speed, but only just. Instead of running at a frequency of 2.2GHz for the two Kryo 360 performance cores in the Snapdragon 710, the cores are running at 2.0GHz in the Snapdragon 670.
The clock speeds for the remaining cores are exactly the same for both chipsets and are running at a 1.7GHz. This would mean that in terms of processor performance, do not expect to witness a massive difference, but as we all know, performance is not just going to be limited to the processor.
Both chipsets also provide support for LPDDR4X RAM, with a maximum bandwidth of 14.9GB/s and clock speed of 1866MHz.
Snapdragon 670 vs Snapdragon 710: GPU
More differences have started to show up between the Snapdragon 670 and the Snapdragon 710. The Snapdragon 710 features an Adreno 616 GPU, while the Snapdragon 670 has an Adreno 615 GPU. Qualcomm might not have issued the performance differences for each separate chipset’s GPU, but the company was kind enough to state that the Snapdragon 670 would have a 25% graphical performance increase over the Snapdragon 660, while the Snapdragon 710 promised a 35% performance increase.
Snapdragon 670 vs Snapdragon 710: Features
When it comes to wireless connectivity performance, the Snapdragon 670 does not feature support for 4 x 4 MIMO on its cellular modem, which is why you will notice that its Snapdragon X12 LTE modem has a lower download speed of up to 600Mbps compared to the 800Mbps speed for the Snapdragon 710’s Snapdragon X15 LTE modem. The upload speeds, however, remain the same so there is not a whole lot of differences that need to be discussed.
Snapdragon 670 vs Snapdragon 710: ISP, DSP, Resolution Support
The Snapdragon 670 and the Snapdragon 710 have identical DSP (Hexagon 685) and ISP (Spectra 250 ISP for both chipsets) in terms of design but the former features lowered clock speeds, which only means that the chipset is going to support a lowered maximum resolution. The Snapdragon 670 can support up to a single 25MP camera or a 16MP dual-camera, but the Snapdragon 710 can support up to a 32MP single camera and 20MP dual-camera.
One other detail that might not have been noticed is the lack of 10-bit display pipelines, meaning that HDR capture isn’t a feature on the Snapdragon 670, but it is supported by the Snapdragon 710. Additionally, the display controller running in the Snapdragon 670 is less powerful and will only be able to support FHD+ resolutions as opposed to the QHD+ capabilities of the Snapdragon 710.
Snapdragon 670 vs Snapdragon 710: Conclusion
The Snapdragon 670 only has a few differences between the Snapdragon 710 so as a result, it will end up giving more affordable smartphones powerful specifications, and fewer compromises to start with. Qualcomm has also readied the Snapdragon 670 and devices that will feature the newest SoC can be expected to arrive in the coming months, ideally before 2018 ends.
