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How does the operating speed compare to original Fenix 5X?
Former Member
I've had a F5X for more than a year. The ClimbPro, improved battery life, and blood oxygen saturation monitoring all appeal to me. But it's an expensive watch. Can anybody who's owned a Fenix 5X compare how quickly the two watches operate? Is the new one faster cycling through CIQ watch faces, widgets, and in using the maps? Thanks!
Just an observation, given that it is "known" that current firmware builds are suffering lag when using CIQ watchfaces, there is absolutely no point in making a video comparison claiming there is noticeable lag between the two when the plus version is running a Garmin built in watchface and the original 5x running a CIQ custom face. The plus clearly has a significant advantage for this reason.
This test should have been undertaken with all watches running the same or similar Garmin watch faces, it's not rocket science, just common sense.
From a previous owner user of Fenix 5X and and new owner of a 5X plus, the cycling between widget is smoother, there is also a marker on the left side showing where you are in the collection of widgets. The GPS fixes are faster also. I'm able to get a fix with GPS+Galileo in.... One second !! From my sundeck. I just wanted to test it for your information... The GPS fix was immediate (!!??) as I was expecting at least 10 seconds and it's the first fix from the day. It is really really fast compared to my previous 5X which was sometime lost for minutes... Perhaps it had downloaded the ephemeris at the last sync ? Also the fix was made with the GPS + Galileo.
I've got a 5X+ and 5X. Both running stock garmin watch faces. The 5X+ cycles through widgets a little faster and smoother - though I never really found the speed on the 5X concerning. Maps functionality is noticeably snappier on my F5X+, which I appreciate over the 5X.
Not convinced with the video, the really question is in the hardware, same CPU but higher clock speed, new CPU, better use of the 16GB memory who knows, either way any improvement will ultimately be seen in the redraw speed of the maps, I have a feeling there won’t be much in it.
One thing with this benchmark and others like The Tree Benchmark, is they are not measuring HW performance. They are benchmarking CIQ performance. CIQ apps are in a byte-code format, and actually run with the CIQ Virtual Machine, which in turn, sits on top of the firmware.
So, You're measuring CIQ apps and not the HW. In the Tree benchmark I linked to, check the description for an example of this, with the numbers for the Chronos. Fenix Chronos (F3 base): 4065 Fenix Chronos (F5S base): 3215
You'll see that with the same HW, the numbers are different based on the FW,etc. If these were a HW benchmark, the numbers would be the same. Also, because these run a few layers above the HW, can be impacted by things like background process, syncing, etc.
Exactly. Additionally, you can check the Fenix 5X results in The Tree Benchmark page. It says a score of about 2700. However, after software version 7 or sth. Garmin slowed things down. Since that, my Fenix 5X gets lower scores. Now, I did some tests and it says 1717 points. Garmin slowed down the watch 1000 points!!!
Also raw max. processor frequency is not important, because we don't know at what frequency Garmin runs the device. For example Fenix 3 (non HR) CPU is 150 MHz and can run at 180 MHz in HSRUN mode. Garmin Epix and Fenix 5X CPUs are same and can run at 120 MHz. However, in such tests Fenix 5X or even Epix is faster than Fenix 3!..
Thanks everybody, I appreciate the insight you've shared.
* It sounds like the F5X+ is a little faster than the F5X, especially in map drawing. There's value in this. * ClimbPro is appealing and I doubt they'll port it back, because they want to sell watches. * Incredible battery life would be very valuable to me. Leave my spare battery behind on short backpack trips. * PulseOx has limited value to me because it's rare that I climb above 7K. * I always calibrate my altimeter manually. If the new method works that would be great. The DEM doesn't seem very good in the 100K maps I have though.
Are there other changes any of you have noticed that could help influence my decision?
Depends on what Garmin have planned for future software updates.....at the moment the 5x is slow within the IQ environment...where as before it was a third faster in the IQ benchmark PRG's...this happend straight after v6.0 since then the processing speed has been reduced..some game prg's run with lag..and now further reduced as if effects IQ watchfaces. This however is likely to change back again as its being looked at by support and the engineer's... due to our reports... So as to which will be faster in the long run...will depend on Garmins updates.
