ARM A53/A57/T760 investigated - Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Exynos Review
by Andrei Frumusanu & Ryan Smith on February 10, 2015 7:30 AM ESTGPU Performance
In the graphics department we're matching up Qualcomm's Adreno 420 versus the Mali T760MP6. The Adreno is running at 600MHz and is able to benefit from almost double the memory bandwidth at 25.6GB/s versus 13.2GB/s due to the Snapdragon's increased 128-bit memory interface. Let's look at how both compare in our overall benchmarks:
In 3DMark Unlimited the Exynos version comes just short of a few fps behind the Adreno 420. What is also surprising is that the Exynos 5433 performs much better in the physics score than I had anticipated; the same test on Huawei's SoCs limited the thread onto the little cores in the default settings giving mediocre performance results. However, it seems the A53 is performing much better and is able to match Qualcomm's offering now.
In BaseMark X 1.1, the Exynos is again neck-and-neck with the Snapdragon version. It loses by a slight margin in the Dunes benchmark while winning in the Hangar scenes by a similarly small margin. BaseMark X is again one of the benchmarks that can trigger the 700MHz state of the Mali GPU, offering higher performance at a much higher power draw depending on which scene is currently rendered on both tests.
Again we continue to see the same pattern in GFXBench's scenario benchmarks, with the Exynos version lagging a few frames behind the Qualcomm GPU in both Manhattan and T-Rex, in both on-screen and off-screen results.
It's on the synthetic tests that we finally see some major deviation between the two architectures. ARM's Mali simply can't seem to keep up with the ALU throughput of Qualcomm's architecture. Both the Adreno 330 and 420 have a clear computational power advantage, exceeding even Imagination's PowerVR GPUs in the iPhones, leaving Mali strictly on the lower end of the performance spectrum.
We see a similar situation in the Alpha Blending and Fillrate tests, as the Adreno offers 2-3x the throughput. Utilizing the extra memory bandwidth here seems to be key to the success of the Snapdragon 805's graphics performance.
I've already mentioned the Driver Overhead score in the the more in-depth analysis of the T760. It's the first Android device to truly stand out from the rest of the crowd, finally making some progress into trying to catch up with Apple's excellent performance on iOS. Here's hoping more vendors concentrate on improving this metric in future driver updates.
I did some extensive power measurements on the Note 4 Exynos in this review, so naturally we're keen to see how this transforms into our battery benchmarks on the next page.
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Johnmcl7 - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
I decided to go for the Snapdragon version for the Gear VR support, I think it was Carmack who posted recently saying the Exynos version was still lagging. Plus the Snapdragon version is officially supported in my territory which should make warranty calls less hassle, I've used the Exynos version but didn't really notice any difference in day to day use and was quite happy with the Snapdragon 800 in the Sony Z Ultra.Also the Snapdragon Note 4's are much better supported for custom roms compared to the Exynos versions.
djvita - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
lol this now is old, samsung has a new exnyos (7420) with mali T760 ready for the S6.http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/1874253
Tom Womack - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
And when the S6 comes out, in three months or so Andrei will have wired it up, connected it to data loggers, and run the experiments to work out what it does. If you want content-free reviews of products as they come out, I would recommend somewhere other than Anandtech.Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
It should happen much faster than that, this article fell victim to the same problems as the Nexus 9. Luckily Ryan is healthy again and any future mobile content should be able to be handled by me and Josh.djvita - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
i appreciate the reviews, and from the first part of tom's comment i thought he was going to say that yeah in 3 months after that there will be another exnyos (a72)?i actually like the low # of reviews. i don't want this site to become gsmarena. explore the arch ( i hope once the flex 2 comes out, you do so for S810) and perform normalized benchmarks that show not oooo lookie high score!, but the real improvements in the design and dies.
sure, do a review of each flagship, so people can decide, but not much more as it becomes too taxing on the writer.
Andreii - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Its not just lollipop though 7420 is overclocked. A57 cores at 2.1 and a53 cores at 1.5 ghzextide - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
That's not what overclocking means...lilmoe - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
looks like the 7420 won't be crippled by memory bandwidth this time around.http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/...
mpokwsths - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Learn to search better and compare apples to apples: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/...psychobriggsy - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
From this (http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/... we can see that the 7420 is significantly faster under Lollipop that the 5433, the Lua multicore score seems to be fixed, and the significantly higher memory scores suggests LPDDR4 or 128-bit memory.