
Ask HN: How a phone can be more powerfull than a full size laptop? - guilamu
As you may have seen, Fortnite will run at 60 fps on the latest Honor View 20 at a resolution of 1080 x 2310 with passive cooling and 0 noise (the game also runs at stable 30 fps+ on last year now 300 usd phones).(1)<p>Meanwhile, on the latest intel CPU (with integrated so called HD graphics GPU) at a resolution of 1280 x 720, the game performs at between 30 and 50 fps with considerable amount of noise and heat.(2)<p>So, my question is: how a 600 usd phone (300 usd in a year or so) can outperform by that much a 1,000 usd + laptop? It just beats me...<p>Are Intel&#x2F;AMD chips that bad? Are Huawei&#x2F;Qualcomm chips that good?<p>1. https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.soyacincau.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;23&#x2F;honor-view-20-fortnite-60-fps&#x2F;
2. https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.laptopmag.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;play-fortnite-intel-hd-graphics
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dmytroi
From my understanding, post processing is completely different, like anti
aliasing used, HDR pipeline used, shaders overall used, etc. [1] goes into
detail what exactly might differ.

It's not like mobile phone is superior by any means to PC. One can compare TDP
and figure out difference in raw performance. Is more that rendering
techniques that give "diminishing returns" (in some peoples opinion) are
exponentially more resource heavy, for example lightmaps (almost free even on
mobiles) vs dynamic shadows (can be insanely expensive).

\- [1] [https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-
us/Platforms/Mobile/Perform...](https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-
us/Platforms/Mobile/Performance)

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Zekio
The game is using lower resolution textures on the phone and probably a lot of
stuff turned down beyond the settings available in the desktop version

Edit: The version running on the phone is basically incredibly optimized

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guilamu
Might be the start of an explanation. It does looks pretty close to me,
though:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xRAlPAhHtI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xRAlPAhHtI)

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nopriorarrests
I took a screenshot from this video.

[https://i.imgur.com/z5Tm5zs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/z5Tm5zs.jpg) \-- compare
the quality of render marked with blue rectangles. Especially hand.

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guilamu
Indeed a big difference. I would gladly accept this kind of graphics for 60
fps on a low end laptop, too bad it's not an option.

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arvigeus
The same reason PlayStation and XBox can provide better graphics than a
monster PC, despite having modest specs: When you are targeting a single model
of CPU/GPU, you can do all sorts of optimizations.

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Swalden123
This is so incorrect it physically hurt to read.

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ghostbrainalpha
I would love to get the details on your comment.

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Swalden123
A “monster” pc has raw processing power that consoles are not even close to.
Whilst console games are optimised for targeted hardware, optimisation often
means a reduction in certain graphical elements to allow the game to run
smoothly. You can’t run a console game on the same graphical quality that a
monster pc could.

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RantyDave
They have lots more development dollars thrown at them, basically. And they
don't have too much cruft to haul around. Yet.

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muzani
Development dollars correlate poorly with progress. It helps, but even an
order of magnitude difference brings little extra gain.

