The Samsung Galaxy S7 & S7 Edge Review, Part 1
by Joshua Ho on March 8, 2016 9:00 AM ESTGPU Performance
On the GPU side of things, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 is equipped with the Adreno 530 clocked at 624 MHz. In order to see how it performs, we ran it through our standard 2015 suite. In the future, we should be able to discuss how the Galaxy S7 performs in the context of our new benchmark suite as we test more devices on our new suite to determine relative performance.
At a high level, GPU performance appears to be mostly unchanged when comparing the Galaxy S7 to the Snapdragon 820 MDP. Performance in general is quite favorable assuming that the render resolution doesn't exceed 2560x1440.
Overall, the Adreno 530 is clearly one of the best GPUs you can get in a mobile device today. The Kirin 950's GPU really falls short in comparison. One could argue that turbo frequencies in a GPU don't make a lot of sense, but given that mobile gaming workloads can be quite bursty in nature and that gaming sessions tend to be quite short I would argue that having a GPU that can achieve significant levels of overdrive performance makes a lot of sense. The A9 is comparable if you consider the resolution of iOS devices, but when looking at the off-screen results the Adreno 530 pulls away. Of course, the real question now is how the Adreno 530 compares to the Exynos 8890's GPU in the international Galaxy S7, but that's a question that will have to be left for another day.
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bodonnell - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
Any chance you'll be doing an in depth review of the Exynos 8890 equipped model. I would really like to see an in depth review that compared it to the SD820. Preliminary benchmarks seem to suggest it is comparable in the CPU department but behind in the GPU department. Since it looks like us Canadians will be getting the Exynos variant I'd like to see if we'll actually notice a difference in everyday use...tipoo - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
That's really strange! Usually it's NA vs world, but why would Canada get Exynos while the US gets SD820?bodonnell - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
It is pretty odd as Samsung usually ships the same hardware to both Canada and the US. It seems in this case they are only shipping the SD820 version in CDMA markets and since Canada is all GSM we are getting the Exynos version. I don't know that this has been 100% confirmed yet though, that's just what the rumour mill is saying.phoenix_rizzen - Monday, April 11, 2016 - link
It's true, the Canadian version uses the Exynos 8890 SoC (as shown by CPU-Z, and CPU Spy on this Telus S7).zeeBomb - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
OMG...! JOSH!!! you made my dreams come true with a blessed review.nathanddrews - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
Still completely stupefied as to Samsung's (and Google's) decision to continue with this whole black text on white background thing, knowing full well the OLED consumes more power when pushing white. Also, it's ugly.Qwertilot - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
Less net area of text than background, surely?theduckofdeath - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
It's less straining for your eye to read black text on white (which is why you'rereading this in black on white right now :D ). Also, the brightness of the system settings is to be fair completely irrelevant in the long run. Once you've tinkered with whichever settings you prefer, you rarely ever go into those menus again. Making the UI look consistent clearly has a bigger weight in that design choice.WagonWheelsRX8 - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
Pretty good write-up.I have one request: In your charts, can you put the SoC powering the device (in smaller letters) underneath the name of the device? It would be helpful to understand why a device performs like it does (is it SoC related or subsystem or software), and it's pretty standard info in PC based reviews. Otherwise, keep up the good work!
foneAddict - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
Please Please Please can you do a review of the Exynos 8890 variant. I have a sneaky suspicion battery life on this SoC will be significantly better than SD820.Great review as always. Looking forward to part deux :-)