The creator claims to have successfully run Windows applications and games, including The Witcher 3 . The system was able to run the game at 1080p resolution with the Ultra graphics preset, delivering around 20–30 FPS. Notably, the GPU was sitting at approximately 99% utilization during gameplay, while certain scenes managed to exceed 30 FPS. That obviously isn't enough performance to turn the smartphone into a replacement for a modern gaming PC. However, it is impressive that a smartphone SoC can render a demanding PC game at 1080p using a compatibility stack designed to translate software between different CPU architectures and operating environments.
The project is anything but practical, as the two desktop CPU coolers make the original smartphone form factor essentially irrelevant. However, by giving the Snapdragon 8 Elite substantially more thermal headroom, the creator has turned a flagship smartphone into something that sits somewhere between a phone and a desktop PC. More importantly, it raises an interesting question about how much performance modern mobile chips are leaving on the table simply because they have to fit inside our pockets.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News , or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom\u2019s Hardware.\u00a0 He is a long time technology journalist and reviewer specializing in PC components and peripherals, and welcomes any and every question around building a PC. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-25/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Kunal Khullar Social Links Navigation News Contributor Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. He is a long time technology journalist and reviewer specializing in PC components and peripherals, and welcomes any and every question around building a PC.
Alastor01 Okay. This is really hard to believe. How can a phone chip of 2024, even of premium class compete essentially with a 6 core 1st gen Ryzen (which while old is still power horse) + something like GTX 1070? Sure they are 10 year old but still… They would have far better heat dissipation (CPU GPU separate + much more space for heat to escape). Not to mention x86 to ARM emulation? Finally ARM cores are weaker in general compared to Intel / AMD. How can a tiny SOC achieve that? Reply
usertests Alastor01 said: Okay. This is really hard to believe. How can a phone chip of 2024, even of premium class compete essentially with a 6 core 1st gen Ryzen (which while old is still power horse) + something like GTX 1070? Sure they are 10 year old but still… They would have far better heat dissipation (CPU GPU separate + much more space for heat to escape). Not to mention x86 to ARM emulation? Finally ARM cores are weaker in general compared to Intel / AMD. How can a tiny SOC achieve that? Cortex-X925 or Oryon cores have IPC that is more comparable to Zen 3 or Zen 5, not Zen 1: https://chipsandcheese.com/p/arms-cortex-x925-reaching-desktop ARM cores can also have up to 32 MiB L3 cache, although the Snapdragon 8 Elite only has 8 MiB. Turbo is up to 4.32 GHz on that chip (and climbing closer to 5 GHz in future flagships). Zen 1 peak clock speed is 4.1 GHz for the 95W chips like the Ryzen 5 1600X, but lower than 4 GHz for all of the others. So smartphones now have a stupendous amount of CPU performance. That's often untapped, but if you give it enough cooling to sustain 4.32 GHz for a long time, that will be good for gaming performance, which is often leaning heavily on 1-2 threads anyway. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cooling/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cooling/modder-straps-two-desktop-cpu-coolers-to-zte-nubia-z70-ultra-turns-smartphone-into-a-gaming-pc-snapdragon-8-elite-soc-with-24gb-of-ram-runs-the-witcher-3-at-1080p-ultra#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
- Class Is in Session: GeForce NOW Levels Up Linux, Chromebooks and More
- NVIDIA Alpamayo 2 Super, the Frontier Open Model for Robotaxis and Autonomous Vehicles, Now Available for Commercial Use
- Just one instruction on AMD's 2015-era CPUs cracks open secret memory areas and gives full hardware-level control — exploit for 15h and 16h chip families gets y
- Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indosat and NVIDIA Open Indonesia’s First University AI Center to Develop Local AI Talent
- Just one instruction on AMD's 2015-era CPUs cracks open secret memory areas and gives full hardware-level control — exploit for 15h and 16h chip families gets y
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.