Snapdragon G: Qualcomm’s new chip series for handhelds

Qualcomm unveiled new handheld chips just in time for Gamescom. They follow the Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 introduced at the end of 2021, which is in the newly launched Cloud handheld Razer Edge. Given the high mobile share in the gaming market and the current handheld trend, the announcement is not surprising. Also, the gaming industry is currently focusing on cross-platform gaming and cloud streaming. The three new chips in the Snapdragon G series are aimed at entry-level, mid-range and high-end devices.

G1 and G2 on fanless handhelds

Designed and supported for cloud gaming on the Snapdragon G1 fanless gaming handheld Wi-Fi 5 (WLAN-ac) and Bluetooth 5. It has an Adreno A11 GPU and eight CPU cores. As for screen resolution and video resolution, it supports max Full HD with 60 frames per second. So the G1 chip won’t render the games themselves, if possible, but only process streams like PlayStation Portal.

The Snapdragon G2 is intended to be used in dedicated gaming devices with more hardware space According to Qualcomm, they can also be passively cooled. Adreno A21 GPU is apparently present Enough power for mobile games, so apart from cloud gaming, some less demanding games can run on the Snapdragon G2. beside Wi-Fi 6/6E And the chip even supports Bluetooth 5 5G mmWave and 5G Sub-6 (X62 Modem). While videos can theoretically be recorded in 4K at 30 frames per second, handheld displays can be used with this chip. Up to 144 frames per second in Full HD+ display

Actively cooled G3x Gen 2 with ray tracing

Qualcomm distinguishes the Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 more clearly from other chips as the flagship of the series. It’s designed to power better-equipped, actively-cooled enthusiast handhelds. Compared to the G3x Gen 1, which is still based on the Snapdragon 888, the successor offers GPU performance is more than doubled And a CPU that’s more than 30 percent faster. A notable feature is support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which suggests a GPU like Adreno 740 in Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

The company is talking about an Adreno A32 GPU, eight CPU cores Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3. There is also support for stereo haptics (vibration), two cameras and FHD+ with 144 FPS. The modem seems to be better, supporting 5G download rates of up to ten gigabits per second and 5G sub-6 at 300 MHz. Incidentally, Qualcomm introduced a reference design with the G3x Gen 2 for developers and manufacturers.

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• Qualcomm (press release)

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