Lava Xolo X900 Review - The First Intel Medfield Phone
by Brian Klug on April 25, 2012 6:00 AM ESTGPU Performance - GLBenchmark 2.1
While Intel's Atom core is a newcomer to Android, the PowerVR SGX 540 used in Medfield's SoC has been around the block quite a bit. Most recently, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus used an OMAP 4 that features the same SGX 540 GPU. The GPU clock is a bit higher than we're used to at 400MHz (vs 304MHz for the Galaxy Nexus), but otherwise the design and its performance are both known quantities.
We start with GLBenchmark, one of the better Android GPU tests on the market today. There are two benchmarks, Egypt and Pro, and each is run in two modes: native screen resolution and offscreen (vsync disabled) at 720p. The latter is more useful for apples to apples comparisons as everything is rendering the same number of pixels, whereas performance in the onscreen tests is determined by the screen resolution of the device along with the performance of its GPU.
The X900 falls in just behind the Optimus 3D, which shares the same GPU but is running at a lower resolution. All things considered, the X900 does reasonably well here but it's definitely not leading the pack.
At the same display resolution and without any vsync limits, the X900 falls significantly behind the cream of the crop. Despite the GPU clock advantage, Medfield is no faster than OMAP 4 in the Galaxy Nexus here which is a bit perplexing. We're either bumping into a memory bandwidth limit or some other CPU/driver limitation. Either way, Intel definitely needs a faster GPU. We'll get it but not until early next year with the 544MP2 in the Atom Z2580.
The Pro results actually show us more of what we expected to see:
The offscreen tests give the Medfield based X900 a 25% advantage over the Galaxy Nexus, which makes sense. The Droid 4 is closer than that, despite also using the same GPU.
Basemark ES 2.0 V1
Rightware's Basemark ES 2.0 V1 is an aging GPU test that tends to favor Qualcomm's Adreno GPUs above almost all others. The Imagination Technologies based GPUs, such as the SGX 540 used in Medfield (as well as NVIDIA's Tegra GPU) don't fare as well here. Intel's GPU clock advantage does show up a little bit in these tests, making it the fastest PowerVR SGX based offering here:
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vol7ron - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
I doubt windows would expect PCI channels lol. Though, it might need drivers to operate.Everything you need is on the phone for windows to operate (Screen, CPU, Video, RAM and Disk space) exists, even though Windows doesn't require it all. Though, Windows does need some way to communicate with those devices (device drivers), which Win7/etc probably doesn't have.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
A few years from now it is likely I might be able to acquire one of these for dirt cheap. (Broken screen, etc) I would use it just for an ultra low power ultra low profile *single-function* pc. I would very much like to know if this hardware can run windows 7. It doesnt need to run well, it just needs to be able to go on the web and do basic things similar to an atom nettop.superPC - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
it won't run windows 7. unlike windows 8, windows 7 requires standard RAM not LPDDR. windows 7 also requires some form of PCI.Musafir_86 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
-Excuse me, but IMHO, the type of physical RAM shouldn't matter. If not, we couldn't be able to load these OSes on VMs at all. :)Regards.
B3an - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
Why would you even want to run Win 7 on this when Win 8 would clearly be WAY better suited, not to mention it also uses less resources and RAM while remaining faster/snappier than 7.rahvin - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link
I'd imagine he wants to know because Windows 8 is going to be only slightly less successful than Vista. Personally I'd guess around 5% of the Vista sales. It's a disaster in waiting unless they make dramatic last minute changes. You should try using it.joshv - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
I am not sure why this chipset matters. Intel usually wins on x86 compatibility with older software. In the phone space there is no existing x86 code, and in fact they are stuck emulating another ABI - so they will be slower and less efficient that competitors that implement that ABI natively.That leaves Intel to compete on price/performance alone in a market where their competitors have 99.9% of the market. An odd position for Intel.
Perhaps this makes more sense in a Windows 8 tablet?
Impulses - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Its netbooks all over again, on a much bigger scale. ARM is moving upscale, if Intel doesn't start competing directly they will eventually start ceding some existing market share (when tablets/laptops start to overlap more, and the writing's on the wall with Windows for ARM).Only difference is they're up against a capable rival(s) as opposed to a limping AMD, so they can't just come out of the gate strong and them dog it and let the lower end market stagnate in order to maintain profits.
This is a small first step but it'll allow them to ink more deals and possibly cement a strong foundation for upcoming Win8 ARM tablets which is probably their bigger long term concern.
dcollins - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Did you even read the article?The x86 vs ARM issue is mostly a non-issue that will be completely resolved within a few months. Dalvik apps are JIT compiled to ARM and x86 and will perform similarly. In fact Intel might have an advantage here because they have the best compiler engineers in the world with decades of experience in generating high performance x86 code. NDK apps will generally be supported natively; developers only have to check a box to include x86 binaries. Even Apps that aren't compiled with x86 support are translated prior to installation on the users device. Nothing about the instruction set makes Medfield slower than ARM.
Performance today is comparable to modern ARM processors even when running an out of date, slower OS. Performance in 4.0.x should match or outperform even Krait. Graphics performance is middle of the road, but that's a major concern for many smartphone buyers (myself included). Even in benchmarks that purposefully stress mutliple cores, Medfield holds its own against the many cored competitors. Real world usage is more lightly threaded.
Browser performance is the most important metric for my usage and here Intel performs extremely well. If Medfield is available in a 4.x phone when it comes time for me to upgrade, I will seriously consider it versus a Krait based offering. Now imagine a next generation Atom build on 22nm with dual core, hyperthreading and possibly OoO execution: that chip will eat A15s for breakfast.
dcollins - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
edit: "Graphics performances... is NOT a major concern"