ARM A53/A57/T760 investigated - Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Exynos Review
by Andrei Frumusanu & Ryan Smith on February 10, 2015 7:30 AM ESTGPU Performance
In the graphics department we're matching up Qualcomm's Adreno 420 versus the Mali T760MP6. The Adreno is running at 600MHz and is able to benefit from almost double the memory bandwidth at 25.6GB/s versus 13.2GB/s due to the Snapdragon's increased 128-bit memory interface. Let's look at how both compare in our overall benchmarks:
In 3DMark Unlimited the Exynos version comes just short of a few fps behind the Adreno 420. What is also surprising is that the Exynos 5433 performs much better in the physics score than I had anticipated; the same test on Huawei's SoCs limited the thread onto the little cores in the default settings giving mediocre performance results. However, it seems the A53 is performing much better and is able to match Qualcomm's offering now.
In BaseMark X 1.1, the Exynos is again neck-and-neck with the Snapdragon version. It loses by a slight margin in the Dunes benchmark while winning in the Hangar scenes by a similarly small margin. BaseMark X is again one of the benchmarks that can trigger the 700MHz state of the Mali GPU, offering higher performance at a much higher power draw depending on which scene is currently rendered on both tests.
Again we continue to see the same pattern in GFXBench's scenario benchmarks, with the Exynos version lagging a few frames behind the Qualcomm GPU in both Manhattan and T-Rex, in both on-screen and off-screen results.
It's on the synthetic tests that we finally see some major deviation between the two architectures. ARM's Mali simply can't seem to keep up with the ALU throughput of Qualcomm's architecture. Both the Adreno 330 and 420 have a clear computational power advantage, exceeding even Imagination's PowerVR GPUs in the iPhones, leaving Mali strictly on the lower end of the performance spectrum.
We see a similar situation in the Alpha Blending and Fillrate tests, as the Adreno offers 2-3x the throughput. Utilizing the extra memory bandwidth here seems to be key to the success of the Snapdragon 805's graphics performance.
I've already mentioned the Driver Overhead score in the the more in-depth analysis of the T760. It's the first Android device to truly stand out from the rest of the crowd, finally making some progress into trying to catch up with Apple's excellent performance on iOS. Here's hoping more vendors concentrate on improving this metric in future driver updates.
I did some extensive power measurements on the Note 4 Exynos in this review, so naturally we're keen to see how this transforms into our battery benchmarks on the next page.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
135 Comments
View All Comments
gijames1225 - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Why do you say that? This seems highly comparable in benchmarks, and it's not even running a 64bit OS yet. I'd guess that after they update it to Lollipop it's equal to the A8 overall, which is really impressive given they're generic cores from ARM.arsjum - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
I don't think bigstrudel actually read the article before leaving that comment.Stuka87 - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
But it does take them twice as many cores, higher clock speed, and triple the ram to match the A8. I am not sure Apple is years ahead, but they certainly have an edge, which is most likely a result of designing the software that runs on the hardware. They are able to make efficiency improvement android handset makers just aren't able to do.Alexey291 - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
That's called optimising and that was actually something derided by the author in the article (browser optimisations for the platform are apparently a bad thing now - talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater)Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
I think you misunderstood my point of view, I'm all for optimizations and hope vendors continue it, and even encourage it. I was just pointing out that it negatively affects our benchmarking methodology as Chrome continues to fall behind.bigstrudel - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Chrome isn't falling behind in real-world load times.Only in tampered with benchmark results like Samsung's "optimized" Stock Browser. Benchmarks show performance gains for Samsung's browser vs Chrome on the order of twice the performance? It makes me chuckle to see Samsung also only cheats the results enough to equal the iPhone 6.
Give me a break. Anyone with half-a-brain knows whats up here.
hung2900 - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Bigstrudel, how big is your brain? A quarter?Browser optimization is cheating? So hilarious. Did you spend a little bit of time to read the Browser benchmark part? Or just your brain cannot process?
Kidster3001 - Friday, February 27, 2015 - link
Samsung's custom browser is a tweaked version of chrome. It's just optimizing for the platform. Not only commendable but something that should be the norm.bigstrudel - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
4 times the cores. Much higher clock speed and it still lags behind A8 overall.Easy to understand which one is more advanced based on that set of facts.
DarkLeviathan - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link
lol true. but i never thought about it that way haha