Samsung Galaxy S 4 Review - Part 1
by Brian Klug on April 24, 2013 12:01 AM ESTGPU Performance
Both CPU and GPU clocks are higher on Samsung's version of the Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064AB). While the Snapdragon 600 used in HTC's One (APQ8064T) features a max GPU frequency of 400MHz, in the Galaxy S 4 the max frequency moves up to 450MHz. The increase in max frequency alone is modest (~12.5%), but the gains in GLBenchmark are far more pronounced for whatever reason.
As always, we'll start with low level analysis beginning with GLBenchmark's fill rate test:
Interestingly enough, fill rate is actually lower than on the HTC One. With so many variables at work here it's difficult to say exactly why this is, but the lowest hanging fruit is to blame it on memory bandwidth differences. Without getting inside the Galaxy S 4 (or more extensive poking around) it's unclear what speed Samsung is running its memory at, which could explain the differences here. We tried tossing the Galaxy S 4 in the freezer and re-running the test but performance didn't improve substantially. Note that GLB's fill rate benchmark is the only one that did not show the Galaxy S 4 ahead of HTC's One in raw performance.
The low level triangle tests all show significant performance gains over the only other Snapdragon 600 based phone we have (HTC One). Again, I'm not really sure what's going on here with APQ8064AB but the gains here are greater than what clock speed alone can be responsible for. Samsung could be running at higher GPU frequencies more aggressively than HTC or it could have software advantages (a newer Adreno driver perhaps?) or there could be more to this APQ8064AB mystery than we realize.
Egypt HD delivers a fairly sane number however. The Galaxy S 4 manages to outperform the HTC One by around 17% here. Again it's unclear why we're seeing greater performance than clock scaling alone would provide but the net is that the Galaxy S 4 does deliver better GPU performance than other Snapdragon 600 based devices today.
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jeffkibuule - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Pretty sure he only has that on loan for brief periods of time. He doesn't own it, too expensive.B3an - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Brian, will you be getting the Exynos 5 octo-core version of the S4 in for testing? I find the SoC interesting.Bramsey89 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Wow biased much? Why did anantech let this guy review this? He's already shown he's biased towards the HTC One.maximumGPU - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
he said if X,Y,Z are important to you then get the S4, but if put more weight on A,B,C then HTC one is the better bet. How is that bias? go away.slatanek - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Samsung is bringing out the trolls... brrrrrrrrrsuperflex - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
They never stop. It's like they get paid for their comments bashing HTC.Oh wait, they do according to DailyTech
berantle - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
The Samsung astroturf trolling is highly disappointing.krumme - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
What a sour tasteIs 50M S3 users are victims of Samsung brand and marketing?
The screen mode "The sanest of them all" (we understand they are sick) actually beats both Iphone and especially One on accuracy. And no words about the all important dynamics of the picture.
And the BSI camera on the S3 is the same quality as the S2? LOL. Every one on this planet shooting with both will know this is nonsense - comparing the international versions. Go to dxomark to get the numbers.
Why does this admiration of the One leads to this sour subjective nonsense about Samsung and S4?
Didnt the ultrapixels pan out as expected?
I like it more professional
Reikon - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
What are you talking about? Look at the table. The iPhone 5, One X, SGS3, Droid DNA, and the One all beat the SGS4 on accuracy, i.e. a lower dE2000.krumme - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
And the color charts. Not that the perfect RGB spectrum is the most important.And then the all important numbers - or impressions - for dynamics of the picture is missing. Excactly the one most important factor deciding how real we judge the picture.