The Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S Review: Fantastic Overall Value
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 29, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Xiaomi
- MI MIX 2S
GPU Performance
On the GPU performance side, I’m expecting again very good results as we’ve investigated the performance of the Snapdragon 845 and the Adreno 630 GPU in depth in our Galaxy S9 review. The Mi MIX 2S should not differ too much from the S9 – apart from maybe slight differences in thermal dissipation capabilities or maybe different thermal throttling configurations.
In Futuremark’s Sling Shot 3.1 Extreme Unlimited Physics test (I’m hoping for shorter benchmark names in the future), the Mi MIX 2S actually performed quite a bit less than the Galaxy S9+. This test is mostly CPU bound, and the only explanation I have here for the results is that Xiaomi must have had made changes to the thermal balance between CPU and GPU and limited the CPU performance more in 3D workloads.
In the graphics score results of the test, the MIX 2S performed a lot closer to the Galaxy S9, posting identical peak performance figures while having only slightly slower sustained performance. Unfortunately we’ve verified both with a second Galaxy S9+ as well as now with the Mi MIX 2S that the sustained performance degradation of the Snapdragon 845 was not an isolated case. This makes sense given that the increased peak performance of the Adreno 630 seems to have come from increased power draw, exceeding the 5W figure in ALU heavy workloads. As naturally phone thermal envelopes can only sustain 3-3.5W SoC TDPs, performance has to go down over time to keep temperatures in check.
Manhattan 3.1 Off-screen performs again nearly identically to the Galaxy S9+, topping the benchmark scores.
T-Rex also matches the Galaxy S9+. The performance of the S845 devices here seems to be lower as the benchmark is running at high fps figures and demanding a lot of memory bandwidth – it’s possible that the increased memory latency on the S845 chips is hindering the performance and efficiency of the chip compared to the S835 in this case.
Overall, in terms of 3D performance the Mi MIX 2S leaves little complain about. While the increased peak power is of a concern, I’ve only found few games and real scenarios where the higher GPU frequencies are actually currently needed. Over the coming months I’m also planning to expand the GPU testing methodology and among other things try to introduce a “real game” battery or power draw test that doesn’t actually require peak performance, but rather maximum efficiency for a given workload. We’ll also hoping to introduce Vulkan GPU tests from Kishonti as well as evaluating the recently announced Basemark GPU.
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icalic - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
Hi @Andrei Frumusanu,why no more gfxbench manhattan es 3.1 / metal test for battery life and final frame rate @ 150 nits?
i think that test is good for us to look GPU efficiency on every device.
icalic - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
sorry, i meant @ nitsicalic - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
@200 nits lolHolliday75 - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
Third time is the charm!hisipo - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
mynkl blUtilityMax - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
No 3.5mm jack, no deal from me point. I would rather use a Moto G6 with SD450 but still have a 3.5mm connector.Fidelator - Sunday, September 2, 2018 - link
Andrei, I have to say that I am impressed by the quality of the latest batch of reviews, truly outstanding, the small one or two paragraph conclusion at the end of each section ia also extremely useful when you want to quickly check the performance of a devic3 in any given area.The newly introduced Speaker quality segment is quite simply, brilliant.
Great review, keep up the great work.
Now, these phones offer so much Bang for the buck that you'd be hard pressed to find any reason spend $700, $800 or $1000 on a phone, the Note 9 comes to mind as it is the one device that really checks all boxes with even some extra and unique bella and whistles but nithing else seems adequate at that point with this or the Pocophone in the market.
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harshale7 - Saturday, October 6, 2018 - link
Reliance Jio is also said to be eyeing the telecom towers and optic fibre network of the cash-strappedphone services provider — assets that Canadian pension fund Brookfield, and a clutch of private equity
firms have also shown interest in, said one of the sources.
The joint lenders forum (JLF), which met in Mumbai on Thursday, discussed the sale of assets of the
telecommunications firm and a proposal to convert RCom’s debt into equity.
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Archipelago - Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - link
I took the full size images from the Mi Max 2s review and edited them a little in Photoshop, the compared them to Galaxy S9 samples. With a little tweaking they were almost the same quality. As noted, the Xiaomi does not do that much sharpening compared to Samsung. I like that. It's almost like having a RAW image in which the user has control rather than the phone manufacturer. I hope you'll do a Mi 8 review. It seems like a Mi Max 2 with an AMOLED display.