ARM's Mali-400 MP4 is the Fastest Smartphone GPU...for Now
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 11, 2011 1:21 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Arm
- Android
- Galaxy S II
- Mali 400
- Mobile
Earlier this morning we published our long awaited review of the Samsung Galaxy S 2. In it we dedicated a few pages to investigating Samsung's own Exynos 4210 SoC. The chip a full featured dual-core Cortex A9 design, comparable to TI's OMAP 4. The big news however is the Exynos 4210 is the first SoC in a smartphone to use ARM's Mali-400 GPU.
Samsung implemented a 4-core version of the Mali-400 in the 4210 and its resulting performance is staggering as you can see above. Although it's still not as fast as the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 found in the iPad 2, it's anywhere from 1.7 - 4x faster than anything that's shipping in a smartphone today.
The Mali-400 MP4 is put to good use in the Galaxy S 2 as our own Brian Klug found it to be the smoothest experience by an order of magnitude compared to any currently available Android phone.
The downsides to the Mali-400 MP4? It doesn't have the best triangle throughput, which could be an issue in future games that may scale along that vector rather than simply increasing pixel shader complexity.
Source: AnandTech - Samsung Galaxy S 2 Review
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bh64 - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
It would be a challenge, but what I would really love to see is a ballpark comparison of these mobile GPUs to their desktop counterparts.The question that bugs the living juices out of me when seeing these kinds of reviews is: “What year of desktop graphics hardware are we approximately at on mobiles?”
Does anyone know of any comparisons of that nature?
DanNeely - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
You could go digging for old quake 3 benches and see what cards gave similar perormance levels.Mike1111 - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
Very nice! The only thing faster this year will most likely be the A5 in the iPhone 5 since OMAP5, Krait and Tegra 3 AFAIK won't be available in a smartphone this year.ph00ny - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
It's not just those two in the running. ARM already announced the T604 which is supposedly several times faster than 400MPGnillGnoll - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
ARM also said they expect T604 to be available in devices in late 2012 at the earliest.dagamer34 - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
According to this Engadget article, the ARM T604 is likely going to be paired with the Cortex-A15 for late 2012, which means we won't be seeing in the Galaxy S III, but maybe the S IV in 2013.http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/10/arm-intros-next...
jlago - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
iPhone 5 could be faster, it depends how much they've had to scale back the performance to make the A5 work in a phone form factor. They have the advantage of being last out the gate and can tune to beat this, if they can find the power/thermal headroom.inplainview - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
The best thing I love about these comments and this site is that for the average person none of this matters. It is only important to guys who still live in their parents basement, have a half eaten pizza next to their 2 liter bottle of diet Pepsi, and a tube of Clearasil on the shelf. Anantech has been a great source of info to me in many ways. Long live the geeks. We shall inherit the Earth. By the way, I do like girls and talk to them frequently. Have been know to get intimate from time to time as well. :) Also, I know what the sun looks like. :)Arnulf - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
You are so cool !!! May I adorn myself in your awesome stellar glow ?inplainview - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
I prefer money. Nothing else will do... Now move along. You are not nearly as funny as me.