The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge Review
by Joshua Ho on April 17, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy S6
- Galaxy S6 Edge
System Performance Cont'd: GPU Performance
As previously mentioned, the Galaxy S6 uses a Mali T760MP8 clocked at 772 MHz, which should provide a healthy improvement in GPU performance over the Exynos 5433. To test this, we run through our standard suite of game-style GPU benchmarks. However, there are still some CPU benchmarks present within these tests such as the 3DMark physics test. In general though, a strong GPU is needed to perform well in these tests. For those interested in an architectural deep-dive of the Mali T760, I would refer to Ryan’s article on the Midgard architecture for more information.
The Galaxy S6 starts out fairly strong in 3DMark. Overall performance is boosted by a chart-topping physics score, while pure graphics performance trails a bit. In this case the S6 is roughly on par with the iPhone 6 Plus, but would have to close quite a gap to catch up to the HTC One (M9).
BaseMark X finds the S6 the runaway winner. The phone is well ahead in both the Dunes and Hangar test, beating the next-best phones (primarily Adreno 420/430 based) by 25% or more depending on the test. The increase over the S5 is especially remarkable; Samsung has more than doubled their performance in this benchmark in barely a year.
GFXBench 3.0 is another strong showing for the S6. In both offscreen tests it's 15% or more ahead of the next closest phone, which is once again the HTC One (M9). Meanwhile compared once more to the S5, Samsung's performance has more than doubled. Consequently even the onscreen tests show significant gains, as the GPU performance gain more than outstrips the additional performance required to drive the higher resolution 1440p AMOLED display of the S6.
Overall, as we can see the performance of the S6 is in line for what is expected from its Mali T760MP8 configuration. Interestingly though the phone's performance exceeds the scaling we'd expect from adding two shader cores and increasing frequency to 772 MHz, as compared to the Exynos 5433-powered Note 4 Exynos. This suggests that the Exynos 5433's GPU was bandwidth-limited to some extent, in addition to any possible thermal throttling that would occur over the course of a GFXBench run. But I suspect we'll have to save the deep dive for a future article as I can't take the review unit apart to find out.
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JeffFlanagan - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
I agree that the lack of a removable battery will be a problem for some people, but I don't know how big a segment of the market that is. We'll find out how well Samsung understands their market over the next couple of months when we see how well the S6 sells.FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
and one of the 1st reports is the selling aka pre orders have been inflated and only 2/3rds have panned out - so the sales are droopy...http://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-galaxy-s6-...
So they are crap. Oh well, appleheads will be very pleased.
Anand321 - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
SOlution is simple!!Carry a power bank and whenever battery is down, charge it in 1/2 hour.
They also have wireless charging option, which you can use. There are wireless charging power bank also in the market.
So instead of buying a 2nd battery and always carrying it, carry a power bank. Thats enough.
But one thing...this phone lasts more than 7-8 hours even after continuous heavy usage!!
FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I love the feel of toting around that extra large battery powerbank and having the wireless charger doohickie plugged in as an add on wherever I need it, it just adds to the feel when I stroke my metal industrial design and take some personal touch moments with it in my hand.Anand321 - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
Also taking care of the fact, that a phone is hardly used after 2/3 years, that extra battery will be of now use after you change your phone. But with wireless charging and such wireless power banks, you dont have to spend money on battery every 2 year!!Makes sense..ain't it!!
opx4real - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
So...you clearly didn't make it all the way to the memory page before you just HAD to voice your knee jerk reaction.darkich - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
While the ask if SD support is technically a functional downgrade, people tend to forget that Samsung is in turn offering the most advanced internal storage that offers unprecedented speed and uncompromising performance.And I'd say that's a fair trade.
darkich - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
*while the lack of SD support *FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
while others tend to forget an sd card slot could be included too, thus there would be no trade off, just a massive improvementjuxt417 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
It has nothing to do with being more iPhone like. An SD card would lag horribly when loading and taking those beautiful 4k pictures it is capable of producing. Not to mention it would cause lag throughout the u.i. and cause unnecessary power drain.