Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8230 vs Intel Core i7-13700

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8230

The Qualcomm MSM8230 (Snapdragon S4 Plus series) is a ARM based high-end smartphone SoC in 2012. It contains two Krait (ARMv7) CPU cores at up to 1.2 GHz, a Adreno 305 GPU, a single channel LPDDR2 memory controller and radio elements.  The chip is produced in 28nm LP (low power process) at TSMC. Compared to the MSM8930, the 8230 lacks LTE.

The Krait cores offer a slightly better performance as the standard Cortex-A9 cores and are compatible to the NEON SIMD extensions.

Intel Core i7-13700

The Intel Core i7-13700 is a fast and relatively economical desktop processor from the current Raptor Lake series. The processor was introduced in early 2023 and offers a base clock of 2.1 GHz. It reaches up to 5.2 GHz in Turbo mode. As with Alder Lake-S, Raptor Lake-S is also based on a hybrid design that combines P and E cores. Compared to the Intel Core i7-12700, the number of E-cores has been doubled to 8, meaning that the Intel Core i7-13700 offers up to 24 threads together with its 8 P-cores. The processor continues to be manufactured using the 10 nm production process called "Intel 7". There is no freely selectable multiplier for the Intel Core i7-13700 (compared to the faster i7-13700K) and the LGA 1700 socket introduced with the Alder Lake series continues to serve as the basis.

Performance

Compared to the Intel Core i7-12700, the IPC of the new Core i7-13700 has been increased slightly. At the same time, the 4 additional E-cores now provide slightly more performance for multi-threaded tasks. This puts the Intel Core i7-13700 at the level of an Intel Core i9-12900K, which also offers a total of 24 threads.

iGPU

The Intel Core i7-13700 is a processor with an integrated graphics unit. The Intel UHD Graphics 770 however is only suitable for office use and very old or low demanding games.

Power consumption

The TDP of the Intel Core i7-13700 is 65 watts in PL1. Intel defines the PL2 limit at 219 watts. If the restrictions regarding power consumption are deactivated in the BIOS, the PL2 value can be reached permanently and even exceeded with good cooling. However, a high-quality and powerful cooling unit should be used for this.