Which is better - Tegra 3 or Snapdragon 400?

[En4cer2k11]

So I have an aging 2012 Nexus 7 that's become unforgivably slow and sluggish in recent months. I want a new tablet but don't have a whole lot of extra money to spend at the moment.

Now, I CAN get a new Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 (I want a bigger screen) though T-Mobile for no money down and just pay $16 a month over 2 years. Granted I'll be massively overpaying for it ($384) as opposed to retail ($239) if I took that route. But my question is, is the SD 400 an upgrade, on par, or less capable than the Tegra 3 in my Nexus 7 I already have?

 

[ndex477]

I use a Hisense Sero 7 Pro with a Tegra 3. I Like the Tegra 3 specs and performance. Also The T3 has a fifth hidden companion core designed to optimize battery life by allowing the device to function optimally at low power levels. The 12-core GPU is great for gaming and is clocked higher than the Cortex A7 Snapdragon.

 

[boathead]

i have a tegra 3 device and a device with a qualcomm dual core snapdragon pro.

the dual core snapdragon device has 2 gb of ram vs. 1 gb ram on the tegra. it is no contest. the snapdragon device kicks the tegra's 4 core butt. i'm thinking the extra ram is the key, so imo that is where you should be looking.

edit: tangentially, my nexus 7 2012 is an entire different, and better, tablet after rooting, installing a custom recovery, the validis rom, and franco's kernel. the only thing that occasionally holds it back is the 1 gb of ram.

 

[Shocky]

This might help, then again it might not

Cortex A9 (Tegra 3) is faster than Cortex A7 (Snapdragon 400) but not a lot faster, probably won't notice any difference.
Adreno 306 (Snapdragon 400) is faster than Geforce ULP (Tegra 3) by quite a lot, you will notice a difference (Gaming)
Cortex A7 (Snapdragon 400) is more power efficient than Cortex A9 (Tegra 3), you will notice the difference.
Both depending on the device come with 1GB or 2GB

Not all Tegra 3 devices suffered with lag, mainly just the ones made by Asus like the Nexus 7 2012, I was surprised Google let them make the 2013 edition, thankfully they did a better job with 2013 edition.

So yes Snapdragon 400 overall is an upgrade.