[Desire HD Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Chainfire:
That's not entirely true. The Snapdragon does apparently have better FPU/SIMD hardware than the Hummingbird does, and this is where these amazing benchmark scores come from (scores are similar between the two if FPU is turned off). That being said, the Hummingbird can probably still perform much higher FPU-wise than it currently does, as the Omnia II (older WM device with older Samsung chip) with FPU hack can calculate FPO's faster than the SGS can. It is however unlikely the Hummingbird can match the Snapdragon's FPU speed (due to it's better FPU and SIMD hardware).

Either way, in the real world this will make little difference. Programmers worth their salt will avoid FPOs (floating point operations) either way, as they are terribly slow (especially on older non-FPU devices like for example the Hero) and until about a year (maybe two) ago, none of the high-end devices had hardware FPO support. Generally they won't be used unless needed. While it is said that Dalvik internally does more FPO then needed, you probably won't run into the limit in real life. Where 3rd party apps use them extensively is data crunching (which isn't really a mobile thing) and 3D graphics.

But how are 3D graphics done? OpenGL ES. v1.0 and v1.1 of OpenGL ES are supported on the older devices, so (good) dev's will try to avoid and/or optimize out FPO's as much as possible. v2.0 (top notch 3D) supported by these new devices does most of that heavy lifting on the GPU, which the Hummingbird has plenty of.

If a Snapdragon device is noticably faster than a Hummingbird device at the same amount of mhz, in a real-world situation, that's certainly possible, but it is not very likely it's due to CPU or FPU/SIMD.

The Hummingbird definitely beats the Snapdragon in graphics performance. But in all likelyhood, games aren't actually going to be designed for the Hummingbird's graphics power until a really significant portion of Android users has comparable power in their devices.

So neither the Snapdragon advantage (FPU/SIMD) or the Hummingbird advantage (GPU) really means that much in the real world, especially if the target consumer is not a real power user. Sure, if you know the target consumer is a game nut, I'd go Galaxy S.

I couldn't recommend one over the other. I'm very happy with my SGS, but as a power user I frown at Samsung's terrible software/firmware (they have always had this problem), and I did tweak it with a lagfix. On the other hand, I also know many SGS owners personally that are perfectly happy with it and are running full stock. I've not really noticed any issues with GPS but I don't use it that much, nor have my SGS-owning friends.

Like Samsung, HTC has a history of screwing their end-users. While it seems for now they have bettered their game, I will always remain wary of them, but I may admittedly be biased against them.

In the end, both the current Desire and the SGS are great devices. The Desire HD will probably be better than the SGS. But worth the wait or the potentially extra $$ ? Nobody knows as it isn't out yet. Either will be a good buy. And keep in mind, your sister isn't a tech nut like we are, she probably cares a ****load less.