Lava Xolo X900 Review - The First Intel Medfield Phone
by Brian Klug on April 25, 2012 6:00 AM ESTGPU Performance - GLBenchmark 2.1
While Intel's Atom core is a newcomer to Android, the PowerVR SGX 540 used in Medfield's SoC has been around the block quite a bit. Most recently, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus used an OMAP 4 that features the same SGX 540 GPU. The GPU clock is a bit higher than we're used to at 400MHz (vs 304MHz for the Galaxy Nexus), but otherwise the design and its performance are both known quantities.
We start with GLBenchmark, one of the better Android GPU tests on the market today. There are two benchmarks, Egypt and Pro, and each is run in two modes: native screen resolution and offscreen (vsync disabled) at 720p. The latter is more useful for apples to apples comparisons as everything is rendering the same number of pixels, whereas performance in the onscreen tests is determined by the screen resolution of the device along with the performance of its GPU.
The X900 falls in just behind the Optimus 3D, which shares the same GPU but is running at a lower resolution. All things considered, the X900 does reasonably well here but it's definitely not leading the pack.
At the same display resolution and without any vsync limits, the X900 falls significantly behind the cream of the crop. Despite the GPU clock advantage, Medfield is no faster than OMAP 4 in the Galaxy Nexus here which is a bit perplexing. We're either bumping into a memory bandwidth limit or some other CPU/driver limitation. Either way, Intel definitely needs a faster GPU. We'll get it but not until early next year with the 544MP2 in the Atom Z2580.
The Pro results actually show us more of what we expected to see:
The offscreen tests give the Medfield based X900 a 25% advantage over the Galaxy Nexus, which makes sense. The Droid 4 is closer than that, despite also using the same GPU.
Basemark ES 2.0 V1
Rightware's Basemark ES 2.0 V1 is an aging GPU test that tends to favor Qualcomm's Adreno GPUs above almost all others. The Imagination Technologies based GPUs, such as the SGX 540 used in Medfield (as well as NVIDIA's Tegra GPU) don't fare as well here. Intel's GPU clock advantage does show up a little bit in these tests, making it the fastest PowerVR SGX based offering here:
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tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Looks like Krait still has a significant lead over Intels competitor, and it was shipping sooner. Intels doesn't have better CPU performance, GPU performance, or battery life, it's just ok at everything. I think their advantage will no doubt grow with 22nm, but for now we finally see Intel entering some stiff CPU competition, even if its for the low power draw segment.Lucian Armasu - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
That's the question: why would manufacturers care? Just because it's Intel? And why would they want to repeat the PC situation where they got an Intel lock-in, when there's much better competition with ARM makers, and they can get the chips for a much cheaper price (which Brian didn't take into account in this review).haar - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
<strong> But, can it play Crysis? </strong>. ROFLMAO! (sorry, first and last time i will use this... but really it is a perfect line imao)y2kBug - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
It seems that Intel put a lot efforts to make Android run on x86. Even if I think that this will not bring Intel any money in return; here is an idea how to make these efforts not to die in vain. Make this runtime work on Windows, so that we can run Android apps on the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. This will make upcoming Windows 8 tablets so much more useful from the very start.superPC - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
YouWave ( http://youwave.com/ ) and BlueStack ( http://bluestacks.com/ ) can already do that on windows 7 right now. BlueStack has shown that it can run android apps on windows 8 PC (it just doesn't have live tiles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKAOkpX7Q2E ).aegisofrime - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Am I the only one who can't wait for an Android phone rocking ULV Haswell? That is gonna be such a beast. Modern in-order architecture + hopefully decent GPU.tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Yeah, Atom is quite an old architecture now in chip terms, a redesign could bring Intel back up in a huge way. While I was disappointed by this SoC, bearing in mind how old it is and its competing against new designs like Krait, I guess they could do much much better with a real new Atom.Khato - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Whereas my guess is that we'll be seeing conroe-class performance out of the silvermont cores in Medfield's successor. Hence why I couldn't help but chuckle at the second to last line in the review, "What I'm waiting for is that Conroe moment, but in a smartphone."tipoo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Conroe class performance would certainly bring these devices up to "good enough" territory. But current Atoms are only a fraction that performance still. We'll have to wait and see I guess.B3an - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
You're both idiots if you think Intel could get Conroe class or vastly better Atom performance out of 32 or 22nm.The whole reason Intel have used the 'old' Atom design in the first place is because it's simple and small, which means lower transistor count, smaller die, and lower power consumptions. If you honestly think they could have got Conroe level complexity or performance in a phone SoC with anywhere near acceptable power consumption and die size, even at 22nm, then you're both living in a fantasy universe.