Cores on a phone vs. Desktop

[dharak1]

So on desktops most people say that single core performance is more important for games, is the same true for smartphones?

I recently picked up a Oneplus Two. It comes with an 8 core SD810 on board with 4 1.56Ghz cores and 4 1.82Ghz cores. There are phones with the SD801 that packs 4 2.5Ghz cores and then the SD808 with 2 2Ghz cores and the clock speed on the others isn't listed. Then there's the SD805 a quad core 2.7Ghz CPU. Ignoring multitasking and GPU performance shouldn't the 805 be the best processor for mobile gaming? I know clock speed isn't everything especially on well rounded smartphones but doesn't higher clock speed generally yield better single core performance?

[Dilli]

I think there are large IPC difference between generations of SOCS, a quick google search suggested the SD810 is 20-50% quicker for same clock speeds. So how well a game can use the additional cores and how much quick the 810 is in that instance will determine whether its better of worse than the SD805 for that particular game.

I don't know too much about the different phone SOCs, only bother reading up every few years when need a new phone, so may be wrong about the above.

These may help to better answer your question though: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/PhoneTablet14/990

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9518/the-mobile-cpu-corecount-debate/17

[Nuke]

x86 cores have better performance than equivalently clocked arm cores, especially in the flops department. im not sure but i think clock speed is more important factor for the arm architecture than it is for x86.