ASUS MeMO Pad HD7 Review: $149 Nexus 7.1 Successor & Our First Look at MediaTek's MT8125
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 29, 2013 3:55 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Asus
- Mobile
- Android 4.2
- MeMO Pad
The GPU: PowerVR SGX 544MP1
Although the MT8125's quad-core Cortex A7 configuration isn't too unusual, its GPU is. MediaTek integrated a single PowerVR SGX 544MP1 into the MT8125. The MP1 suffix isn't redundant as the MP version of the part includes a last level cache.
The 544MP1 is clocked at 286MHz in the HD7 implementation of the MT8125, yielding peak FP performance of just under 9 GFLOPS. That's nearly 2x the peak FP performance of the Tegra 3 GPU in the Nexus 7, although there's much more to performance than just raw FP throughput.
In practice the MT8125's GPU implementation tends to trail the Tegra 3 based Nexus 7. GFXBench 2.7 shows a 12% reduction in fill rate and less than 1/4 the triangle rate of Tegra 3. The Egypt HD test narrows the gap considerably, but T-Rex HD shows a 32% performance advantage for the Nexus 7 (admittedly at unplayable frame rates from both chips).
3DMark for Android has the Tegra 3 based Nexus 7 ahead by around 12%, while BaseMark X grows that margin to over 40%.
The 3DMark breakdown is quite possibly the most interesting because it actually has the MT8125 pulling ahead in the CPU bound physics test. The GPU-specific test however has the Tegra 3 ahead by 14%.
In terms of real world gaming performance, the MT8125 is honestly fine. I gave Shadowgun and Modern Combat 4 a try, both of which were definitely playable. That's always the big thing to keep in mind with the current crop of game simulation tests under Android: they're mostly designed to stress high end silicon. Game developers on the other hand have to target what the majority of the market has. If we look at stats from Unity around 90% of all platforms are Mali-400, Adreno 2xx, PowerVR SGX 531/540, Tegra 2/3 generation. In other words, at least for the near future the MT8125's GPU performance should be ok.
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matt32 - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
Can you guys run more kinds of WiFi tests on your review devices? Peak throughput is as useful as only showing sequential SSD writes/reads. Can you show how the throughput and latency changes over time especially when there's some sort of interference (ie. microwaves, other WiFi access points, cordless phones, etc.).All too often my Skype calls and Netflix videos get forced into a lower quality whenever my WiFi gets burps. Depending on the device (ie. single atenna vs 3 antennas), the frequency of my WiFi spazzing vairous. Of course, I get the least amount of issues when connected via Ethernet.
Alexvrb - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
Yeah I don't know what Google's problem is with SD slots. I'd take this thing over the Google-branded hardware.lightsout565 - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
Very compelling but I'll wait till prices drop to $100. If someone could only make a decent $100 tablet, that'd almost be in "impulse buy" territory for me.Bob Todd - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
I think it's worth noting that the price, although higher than the gen one 16GB Nexus 7 has been since before the iPad mini launch, is actually _cheaper_ than that device when it launched a year ago at $250. Getting a 1200p panel that's also higher quality, a much faster SOC, double the RAM (@1600 vs 1333), much faster storage, and bunch of other little things (rear facing camera, wireless charging, etc.) for $20 less than the 16GB N7 debuted with just one year ago is pretty impressive to me.As for this thing, I actually wish the 8GB model was available here. This looks like the perfect replacement for an old Nook Color that's used to keep a toddler entertained with movies in the car. Especially if it can read SDXC (even if it's the gimped non UHS 1 speed that some devices not rated for SDXC can read them at).
Bob Todd - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
That should read..."noting that the price of the Nexus 7.2".Zibi - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
I've just bought one for my father. Pretty decent thing. Unfortunately it hasn't got USB with OTG. During the brief playing with the thing I did not found the option to create user accounts.SirCanealot - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Sorry for the possibly silly question, but does anyone know what the cpu monitoring tool used in the screen shot in the battery test is? Looks awesome!skyline159 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
It is System Monitorhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com....
randomhkkid - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Great article as expected Anand, what is the program you used to overlay the core usage/speed in game?Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
So basically this is what we can expect to pick up for $99 during holidays sales.