garmin fenix 8 map lag

it‘s probably a combination of reasons and Garmin obviously won‘t confirm what is actually going on.

• the chip is probably quite cheap for Garmin to buy (and yes, it matters for a company  whether it’s e,g, 10 USD or 15 USD - even in a 1k watch)
• it is okay-ish, performance-wise. Yes, a bit of lag here and there but all in all it does all what the watches need
• Garmins developers are very familiar with this chip. Introducing a new one might mean new/unknown issues and some learning curve
• there are faster chips around but not much alternatives with the same (low) energy requirements. Maybe this particular one can easily be underclocked (and voltage lowered)
• Garmin may have a contract with NXP to deliver a large number of these exact chips and maybe there are penalties if Garmin won‘t take them anymore

PS: The CPU is a a NXP i.MX RT500

Actually, we don't know exactly how things work inside these processors. Maybe Garmin even doesn't use the 2D GPU of the chip for accelerating mapping. Who knows?..

Also we don't know how others exactly work. When zoomed out fast, Suunto displays empty squares and later fills them with rendered data. These may be some framebuffer surface for maps etc...

I've been using maps since Fenix 5X and know how slow they can be. I still prefer the vector processing with street names etc. Yeah, it's kinda slow but does the job as the main job is not super fast moving map.

NXP bought the I.MX line from Freescale and previous Garmin's used those Freescale processors. Also I don't know process node sizes for the RT500 line or future products but NXP usually doesn't go with the newest tech. They may even be 28 or 40 nm processors. Also they may not produce a new processer every year. Atm, better versions may be RT600 but it has less SRAM size. RT700 has more memory and additional Cortex M33 and a DSP unit so may be consuming more energy etc.

For mapping processor may be one cause for slowness but for the interface this processor should be much more than enough. Fenix 3 etc. older models had 256 KB SRAM only. Old Pebble watches maybe had less memory but more fluent animations. Definitely software teams has a job to do here.

These processors actually aren't being updated so frequently. Garmin was previously using Freescale processors and NXP bought Freescale, so continues with NXP processors. ARM releases versions but they usually take time to be adoped by the industry. Also there are a lot of other brands using the same processor. Phone processors get faster and use less power after each year, because they shrink the process node sizes every year and much more expensive. Also they follow ARM revisions yearly and can produce a processor core that's released at the same year. I don't have spesific info about node size of this processor but it may even betens, twenties level or even more.

They're practical knowing it's battery first watch than a performance first watch that I use as a tool rather than watching shiny graphics. However, judging by the price it's normal people simply want both of them at the same time.

Heikoo said:

there are faster chips around but not much alternatives with the same (low) energy requirements. Maybe this particular one can easily be underclocked (and voltage lowered)

The only viable alternative is the Qualcomm's Snapdragon W5+, but then we'd be getting 2-4 days of battery life rather than 3 weeks. The NXP RT series really is the only obvious choice given it's got specifically designed for sensor aggregation and extremely low power draw. Garmin has also spent significant resources on ensuring that their OS and apps can run on these processors. It makes sense to stick with NXP, but we either need faster storage or just a little more RAM. 10-16MB seems ideal.

For what it's worth, the Fenix 5+ series had 32MB, the Fenix 6 has 16MB and now the Fenix 7 and 8 make do with 5MB. The reason as to why 5MB is so appealing is because it's on-die (built into the SOC) and chunks of that can be programmatically powered down when not in use making for very, very low power draw requirements unlike the separate 16MB and 32MB modules from the old watches which were constantly powered whether they were being fully used or not.

sis651 said:

RT700 has more memory and additional Cortex M33 and a DSP unit so may be consuming more energy etc.

The RT700 looks like it's the business for the next Garmin watch. The additional M33 in the "Sense Compute Subsystem" allows for gesture control and the NPU allows for speech to text conversion and other basic ML features. This allows Garmin to start producing something very much like the Apple Watch whilst maintaining the same battery life that we're used to. I'm actually finding it quite compelling, particularly if they can squeeze LTE in there as well.

Also on chip memory is faster to access, read, write etc. thus increasing performance. Older watches had those large external memories but all were slower than F7/F8 series. But of course we cannot exactly compare this aspect as processor structures changed a lot too.

When they want LTE they can definitely squeeze LTE like older LTE forerunner model.

which SoC is used by Suunto and Coros ?

Coros release the Pace Pro with a new faster SoC - us.coros.com/pacepro

• Vivid 1.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen
• Fastest in class processor, 2x the speed of PACE 3
• 38 hours of GPS activity tracking
• 20 days of daily use and sleep tracking

My F8x A is as slow/fast as my Epix 2 Pro or my former F7x. And yes, there is a lag while scrolling the map (about 1 sec. or a little bit more (but not 2 sec.). And I think the AW 10, which I only have tested for 10 days before I have returned it (I couldn´t arrange with the battery life at all), was not faster (as far as I remember).

You was really kind to reply to me.

Im testing the watch in these days: i had first walking and with tracking the map lag is not so important. 

With topoactive only yesterday with last official firmware map lag is less than with other type of maps 

I tested other functions like calls and vocal command and i find  it works very good. I found menu so quick and once customized is so good the sensation to use it. Battery drain is a bit strange . After activity is normal but if you leave watch unused it has similiar rate.

Hower i will use it only during my mountqain activities and not like a normal daily watch   

This evening  i updated to beta firmware 13. 14, i think, map lag seem getting worse.

The maximum is when you want to revisionate  an activity did . When you select map to see the activity on the map there is a wait time of black screen of 3 seconds . And when at last the map and the activity appear over the map after other 2 seconds if you scroll the map the lag is about 6 seconds .

For Garmin 

I hope that some Garmin Official  Technician or someone directly from Garmin is so kind to reply to me and tell the official version about all these map issues. It would be not only a gentle move but it would be a correct way to make custumers and users should be treated.

I wait a Garmin reply 

Thank you 

Best regards 

Fabio 

Ps new beta firmware introduced i think weather map as level that is a lot useful ..but im sincere maybe  there was already