The Samsung Galaxy S20+, S20 Ultra Exynos & Snapdragon Review: Megalomania Devices
by Andrei Frumusanu on April 3, 2020 9:30 AM ESTGPU Performance & Power
Moving on, it’s time to talk about the GPUs of the systems. The Snapdragon 865’s Adreno 650 is a microarchitectural successor to last year's Adreno 640, increasing the ALUs and ROPs by 50%. Frequency remains the same at 587MHz, and the company promises a 25% performance boost.
The Exynos 990 is more drastic in its GPU changes. Here we see for the first time a chip using Arm’s new Valhall GPU architecture, in the form of the Mali-G77. We’ve discussed the GPU in detail in the deep dive article last year, so be sure to read about the details of the new design there. Samsung LSI employed an 11-core configuration in the new chip, 1 less core than last year’s G76MP12. This is compensated by clocking the design higher at up to 800MHz, up from 702MHz. The higher clock speed does however cost some additional voltage to reach, with the Exynos 990 now peaking at 712mV compared to the 662mV of the previous iteration, although both designs should be clearly operating at lower than nominal voltages of the process nodes.
Beyond the new GPU hardware, it’s also important to note the new chips are the first of their kind to support LPDDR5, which should bring some good efficiency upgrades to bandwidth hungry tasks such as 3D rendering on a GPU.
Starting off with 3DMark Physics, which is actually a CPU test in a GPU thermally constrained scenario, we see both phones doing well. The Exynos 990 here likely schedules things more onto the A76 cores, and that’s why performance is less than that of the Snapdragon 865 which here takes the leadership position in the benchmark. Throttling isn’t very prevalent on either device, but for some reason the Exynos Ultra device throttled more than the S20+.
Moving onto the graphics subtest, we’re seeing an extremely stark contrast in scores. The Exynos 990 is able to keep up with the Snapdragon 865’s peak performance figures, however once throttling kicks in, the scores quickly fall down to more moderate figures. The Exynos S20 Ultra’s performance here is again quite puzzling as to why it’s so much worse than the S20+ – both phones didn’t seem to behave very differently in their thermal behavior, so that’s super weird. The performance deficit here is gigantic, with the phone only sustaining 28% of its peak performance.
Meanwhile the Snapdragon S20 Ultra doesn't throttle here at all, and that is absolutely not normal – this is not a chip that is somehow super-efficient or has amazing cooling. Over the years I’ve encountered a lot of such odd results with Snapdragon phones in this benchmark, but this time around I’ve had enough of the weird behavior and I do think there’s some low-level cheating going on. The phone will actually start heating up a lot more than under other workloads, up to the point that the test will actually crash. I don’t understand how that’s possible that this happens only in one benchmark but not others, and the most logical (and likely) explanation is that there’s some benchmark detection going on. Again, I’ve only ever encountered this issue on Snapdragon phones in this test (and we’re also using a custom APK), so it’s super suspicious, but we’re just short of finding the smoking gun that this is some malicious behavior. In any case, please disregard the results as they’re not representative of real behavior.
A few weeks ago, Basemark had finally released their new Basemark GPU version 1.2, which now included some bug fixes in the workloads as well as an iOS variant of the test, finally enabling cross-platform testing for mobile devices. After some internal validations, I’ve deemed it worthy to be added to our GPU suite. I’m using a custom mode at 1440p at medium settings to have it be a little more stressing in terms of the workload.
In this new test, we see relatively familiar scaling results, with things being quite on par between the Snapdragon and Exynos SoCs when it comes to their peak performance figures. It’s to be noted just how far ahead Apple’s GPUs are in this test, essentially posting figures almost 2 generations ahead.
Throttling on the Snapdragon 865 S20 Ultra is ok, only losing 22% at thermal equilibrium. The Exynos 990 S20+ was more disappointing, with performance barely better than that of the S10+ last year. The Exynos S20 Ultra again behaved very differently and for some odd reason throttled even more, actually ending up noticeable slower than last year’s model. At only 31% of peak performance, that’s some atrocious performance degradation, probably amongst the worst we’ve ever seen.
Moving onto GFXBench, we arrive on a familiar playing field. Peak performance of the two chips is identical, however the Exynos chip throttles significantly more. The sustained performance results here are horrible for the Exynos 990 as it’s faring worse than what we had measured on the Exynos 9820 in the S10+.
| GFXBench Aztec High Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
| Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
| iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm | N7P | 26.14 | 3.83 | 6.82 fps/W |
| iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak | N7P | 34.00 | 6.21 | 5.47 fps/W |
| Galaxy S20 Ultra (Snapdragon 865) | N7P | 20.35 | 3.91 | 5.19 fps/W |
| iPhone XS (A12) Warm | N7 | 19.32 | 3.81 | 5.07 fps/W |
| Reno3 (Dimensity 1000L) | N7 | 11.93 | 2.39 | 4.99 fps/W |
| iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | N7 | 26.59 | 5.56 | 4.78 fps/W |
| Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) | N7 | 16.50 | 3.96 | 4.16 fps/W |
| Galaxy S20+ (Exynos 990) | 7LPP | 20.20 | 5.02 | 3.59 fps/W |
| Galaxy S10+ (Snapdragon 855) | N7 | 16.17 | 4.69 | 3.44 fps/W |
| Galaxy S10+ (Exynos 9820) | 8LPP | 15.59 | 4.80 | 3.24 fps/W |
Looking at the power measurements of Aztec high, there’s quite the big efficiency differences between the two SoCs. We had already noted that the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 had beat our expectations in terms of power efficiency here, sporting very big upgrades compared to the S855. The Exynos 990 on the other hand is quite disappointing in its advancements. It’s a bit better in terms of efficiency, due to it achieving higher performance, but it comes at a higher power cost.
| GFXBench Aztec Normal Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
| Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
| iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm | N7P | 73.27 | 4.07 | 18.00 fps/W |
| iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak | N7P | 91.62 | 6.08 | 15.06 fps/W |
| iPhone XS (A12) Warm | N7 | 55.70 | 3.88 | 14.35 fps/W |
| Galaxy S20 Ultra (Snapdragon 865) | N7P | 54.09 | 3.91 | 13.75 fps/W |
| iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | N7 | 76.00 | 5.59 | 13.59 fps/W |
| Reno3 (Dimensity 1000L) | N7 | 27.84 | 2.12 | 13.13 fps/W |
| Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) | N7 | 41.68 | 4.01 | 10.39 fps/W |
| Galaxy S20+ (Exynos 990) | 7LPP | 49.41 | 4.87 | 10.14 fps/W |
| Galaxy S10+ (Snapdragon 855) | N7 | 40.63 | 4.14 | 9.81 fps/W |
| Galaxy S10+ (Exynos 9820) | 8LPP | 40.18 | 4.62 | 8.69 fps/W |
We’re largely seeing the same scaling in Aztec Normal, with the Snapdragon variant leading in power efficiency by 35%.
| GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
| Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
| iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm | N7P | 100.58 | 4.21 | 23.89 fps/W |
| Galaxy S20 Ultra (Snapdragon 865) | N7P | 88.93 | 4.20 | 21.15 fps/W |
| iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak | N7P | 123.54 | 6.04 | 20.45 fps/W |
| iPhone XS (A12) Warm | N7 | 76.51 | 3.79 | 20.18 fps/W |
| Reno3 (Dimensity 1000L) | N7 | 55.48 | 2.98 | 18.61 fps/W |
| iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | N7 | 103.83 | 5.98 | 17.36 fps/W |
| Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) | N7 | 75.69 | 5.04 | 15.01 fps/W |
| Galaxy S20+ (Exynos 990) | 7LPP | 85.66 | 5.90 | 14.51 fps/W |
| Galaxy S10+ (Snapdragon 855) | N7 | 70.67 | 4.88 | 14.46 fps/W |
| Galaxy S10+ (Exynos 9820) | 8LPP | 68.87 | 5.10 | 13.48 fps/W |
| Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845) | 10LPP | 61.16 | 5.01 | 11.99 fps/W |
| Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980) | N7 | 54.54 | 4.57 | 11.93 fps/W |
| Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810) | 10LPP | 46.04 | 4.08 | 11.28 fps/W |
| Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835) | 10LPE | 38.90 | 3.79 | 10.26 fps/W |
| Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895) | 10LPE | 42.49 | 7.35 | 5.78 fps/W |
Manhattan 3.1 also isn’t kind to the Exynos S20. The worst figure here is the fact that these S20 variants are barely any faster than the S10 in their sustained performance figures, meaning there’s zero generational improvements.
| GFXBench T-Rex Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
| Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
| iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm | N7P | 289.03 | 4.78 | 60.46 fps/W |
| iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak | N7P | 328.90 | 5.93 | 55.46 fps/W |
| Galaxy S20 Ultra (Snapdragon 865) | N7P | 205.37 | 3.83 | 53.30 fps/W |
| iPhone XS (A12) Warm | N7 | 197.80 | 3.95 | 50.07 fps/W |
| iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | N7 | 271.86 | 6.10 | 44.56 fps/W |
| Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855) | N7 | 167.16 | 4.10 | 40.70 fps/W |
| Reno3 (Dimensity 1000L) | N7 | 139.30 | 3.57 | 39.01 fps/W |
| Galaxy S20+ (Exynos 990) | 7LPP | 199.61 | 5.63 | 35.45 fps/W |
| Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) | N7 | 152.27 | 4.34 | 35.08 fps/W |
| Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845) | 10LPP | 150.40 | 4.42 | 34.00 fps/W |
| Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820) | 8LPP | 166.00 | 4.96 | 33.40fps/W |
| Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810) | 10LPP | 141.91 | 4.34 | 32.67 fps/W |
| Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835) | 10LPE | 108.20 | 3.45 | 31.31 fps/W |
| Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980) | N7 | 135.75 | 4.64 | 29.25 fps/W |
| Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895) | 10LPE | 121.00 | 5.86 | 20.65 fps/W |
Finally, in T-Rex, things are again quite horrible for the Exynos chip. Sustained performance is a little over half the peak performance figures as the chip suffers from major thermal throttling. Looking at the power draw, we’re reaching an awful 5.63W which is notably worse than the Exynos 9820.
Meager 3D Upgrades – Horrible Exynos Experience
Neither the Snapdragon 865 nor the Exynos 990 variants of the S20 are particularly impressive when it comes to GPU performance.
Starting off with the Snapdragon 865, Qualcomm did excellent in terms of their power efficiency and managing to reduce total power consumption compared to the Snapdragon 855. However the chip is still being curb-stomped by last two generation of Apple SoCs, and there's a lot of catching up to do in this regard.
From a device-standpoint, the Snapdragon S865 S20 barely performed any better than some of the more gaming optimized Snapdragon 855 devices from last year. The silver lining here is that both variants of the phones have outstandingly good thermal characteristics, and are usually not allowed to exceed around 42°C peak skin temperatures.
The Exynos 990 S20 variants are an outright disaster in their gaming performance. The best-case scenario here is that the new phones barely match last year’s Exynos 9820 in sustained performance, with the S20 Ultra behaving extra weirdly and sometimes falling even further behind in performance than that.
For attentive readers who noted the MediaTek Dimensity 1000L in the tables, that’s because I wanted to give some sort of notion of the Mali-G77 in a different SoC. That unfortunately didn’t help too much, as the performance points of the two chips are far too apart to come to any conclusion. What’s clear here is that SLSI clocked the GPU very high to match the peak performance figures of the Snapdragon 865, but it comes at the great cost of higher power consumption at those high frequencies.
The results of the Exynos 990 here reminded me of those of the Kirin 960 and Kirin 970 a few years back. Those parts also came out with some inexplicably horrible power figures, which I've since then heard that the matter was blamed on the use of beta GPU RTL as well as early process PDKs. Ultimately, whether it's due to Samsung's 7LPP process node or the implementation of the Mali-G77 GPU IP, the end result is that the Exynos 990 here just stinks, and those variants of the S20 have to make due with a second-tier experience.
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crimson117 - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
$1400 is absurd. There's no way they're worth more than twice as much as a brand new S10.Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
Probably one of the reasons Samsung still continues to sell the S10 series. They're really excellent value right now, and you're not missing out on too much.cha0z_ - Monday, April 6, 2020 - link
You are literally getting just one more year of software support going for s10 series... samsung software support policy is abysmal with less than two years of real support and from there just security. I got both iphone 11 pro max and exynos note 9, if I put aside the cr*ppy 9810 - it will not receive even the oneUI 2.1 as an update, while samsung will soon release it for s10 line. Enough said, note 9 is year and a half old.How can you recommend someone 1000 euro or 1400 euro phone if it will be supported for 1.5 years and from there 1.5 more security updates next to apple with 5 years FULL support with major, minor, day one, betas + security update for old iphones like 4s and 5 (2011 and 2012 respectably)?
goatfajitas - Monday, April 6, 2020 - link
You do realize the phone doesn't stop working when it doesn't get an OS update right? TBH, neither Android or IOS has added a whole lot in the past few years, its just a yearly cadence of very minor updates and not getting them means almost zero in actual use.Featherinmycap - Monday, April 6, 2020 - link
I think there have been a lot of added features to IOS in the last 3 years that I use a great deal. Not saying that Android didnt already have some of these features, but for IOS users we got with IOS 11; a file manager (finally), Messages sync with iCloud, screen recording, useful improvements to Siri and ApplePay. IOS12; lots of performance improvements (lots), Screentime, Shortcuts (scripting), CarPlay, Animoji Memoji, Tracking prevention, IOS13; Single Sign on, external storage, Dark Mode, better support for keyboards, trackpads/mice, etc.Famorcan007 - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
I think it's because Android mostly has offered those features(file manager,screen recording, external storage,support for mice etc.) since way back compared to iOS' slow but steady trickle of features that's why iOS users feel every OS update is huge and significant. I'm using a Note 4(my backup device) right now to comment which doesn't feel too crippled compared to my Android 9 P20 pro.cha0z_ - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
Let's not find an excuse - software support is software support. Security is security - some of us keep all their personal info on their device (most of us) + bank accounts and whatnot, risking compromise on your phone is not that innocent compared to what was like back in the days. IOS adds rapidly more features for sure compared to android that recently starts to look more and more like IOS (and I personally totally don't like that), but still added some good stuff under the hood and some new features.It's not serious to sell 1400 euro phone that is supported for one year and a half. I own exynos note 9 - it's 1.5 years old and already samsung dropped the support, s10 line received oneUI 2.1, note 9 will not. How is that for my 1000 euro phone + double served with that cr*ppy exynos 9810 in it. Now it's in my GF and I am rolling iphone 11 pro max. I prefer android and love oneUI, but I am tired to be a second hand customer.
s.yu - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
Don't know what you're talking about. My Note8 just got another update days ago, one that I preferred not to have because each update comes with a risk of bricking the device while potential changes to the UI are not always welcome either. I also got it ~30% off retail a few months after release, such has always been the state of Samsung, at least for S and Note.I'm no longer buying Samsung but the main reason is lack of the 3.5mm port, if I have to name another then it's between the questionable choice of telephoto in the smaller variants or the oversized device with a mediocre battery(I regard 5000mah to be mediocre for the size). I still do like the UI but I'm willing to look around.
Psyside - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
"It's not serious to sell 1400 euro phone that is supported for one year and a half. I own exynos note 9 - it's 1.5 years old and already samsung dropped the support, s10 line received oneUI 2.1, note 9 will not. How is that for my 1000 euro phone"Very easy, with those "very old software features" Samsung can do what MAC can't, and don't get me start it on the utter crap IOS.
Also don't spin it, Samsung offer 4 (four) years of security updates, so do your research before you type something.
cha0z_ - Wednesday, April 8, 2020 - link
fanboy. Security update hahahahah iphone 4s and 5 still receives security updates - 9 years old phone for 4s. What you will say now?iphone receive FULL support with MAJOR ios versions, updates, minor updates, BETA versions, DAY ONE as their newest and most expensive phone - for 5-6 years and you are talking about 4 years of security updates roflmao. Samsung released note 9 with android 8 when android 9 was already released from more than a months. Oooo, it's enough time, because you can dev your skin and features on top of the dev previews, especially the later ones that are closer to final (for the more tricky/deeply integrated code) - so no excuse for what they did. Basically they gave me one major update - android 10 as android 9 should had been on the note 9 from the start. Even if we count 2, how is that next to 5-6 versions of ios?
And before you talk some more fanboy bs that never used recent years iphones - ios brings a lot more in every new versions (adding features that was missing for no reason, like external USB flash support, file browser for the files on the phone, etc) while android 10 brings you what? More lockdown ios style, iphones gestures and pixel device that is a cheap iphone wannabe.
Because of people like you samsung don't want to change their software support policy. Why should they? It costs money or now you will start with the argument how the phone hardware is not supporting oneUI 2.1 (for the note 9 that is 1.5 years old, but will not receive it most likely ;) ). Or maybe android 11 will be too much for the phone, right? :D
Also I agree - my note 9 can do more than my iphone 11 pro max, but everything that the phones do both (and that's 99.9% of what you will end up using constantly) - the iphone 11 pro max makes the exynos note 9 look like a total utter joke - faster, smoother with NOT A SINGLE frame drop no matter what you do, gaming is insanely good with surprise - NOT A SINGLE frame drop, battery life is x3 times better, apps have MORE features and runs super smooth and great, speakers destroys the note 9 one, camera too is times better, materials are a lot better too, faceid is super good and fast - feels like I don't have any security on - never failed or gave me any issue. Fun fact, note 9 came with fortnite and recommended as gaming phone for that game. My exynos variant can't run smoothly the game even with 30fps cap medium settings and !1080p! while iphone XS max runs it 60fps high 2688x1242 without a single frame drop. Same goes for the 11 pro max, obviously.
As for ios - it improves massively and adds more and more missing features/drops restrictions with every version. ios 14 is already known to drop more. I prefer android, because I can do more + I love oneUI, but that doesn't change the fact that in my country I will receive exynos and 1.5 years of decent support. And in the end of the day - I spend my time in apps, not in the settings menu and apps on ios are better, with more features, smoother, a lot of them exclusive to the platform. Can you play dead cells on your android device? No? Yeah, the port is expected around the end of the year, I have it from June 2019. Full blown civilization 6 on your android device? Yeah, will never come, I have it and it's 1:1 port that runs great. Can go on and on and on. If you spend your time tweaking settings, options, UI - good for you, I spend my time in games and apps.