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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itzraywhy - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
If this isnt the best smartphone android camera in the market what is?sonicmerlin - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
Are you aware that in the COUNTRY benchmarks you mentioned the iPad Air 2 several times but didn't include it in the charts? You even wrote "here we see the Air 2" blah blah except it's not in the chart!sonicmerlin - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
Sorry I meant "CPU" benchmarks. Stupid autocorrect.heartinpiece - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link
Yup, I also pointed that out a few pages(of comments) back.Would be great to see comparisons against the iPad Air 2
JoshHo - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link
We're often faced with a dilemma here as inserting comparison devices can lead to a naive reading that we're attempting to directly compare a tablet-class vs smartphone-class SoC when one has a significantly higher TDP. These scores are also available on Bench but we will add them with a note.3ogdy - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link
Looking at the phone I can very easily state this is an iPhone by Samsung. Leaving the incredibly stupid decisions (no microSD card slot on a high-end phone) and the stupid ones aside (battery is hard to remove), this is one big piece of sh!t. If I wanted an iSh!t, I would've bought one, Sammy. Let CrApple be CrApple, you Korean copycats. I wouldn't be surprised if the Koreans got a deal with the Americans to have the right to use their design papers. This is nearly identical to an iSh!t - look at the edges, at the way the various antennas were integrades, at the grills, the buttons, the SIM cover and the way to remove it.....THIS IS A CrApple product, not a Samsung one.Oh and yes, the SGS5 was ugly as hell and brought nothing new to the table. No progress, no sale. Why would anyone spend money on a phone that's basically the same as its previous generation in terms of tech specs and capabilities, looks a million times worse (including the the version for Gypsies) and costs as if it was a flagship in every possible way?
I couldn't care less about the decisions taken over at Samsung, but I'd love to see these huge "F**k you, customers!" and middle fingers pointed at us reflected in the product sales.
Microsoft did the same thing and they woke up and even posted apologies and stating "We listened." big and clear on their front page. They are about to screw things up with that stupid Windows h8 theme in WIndows 10 again...but keeping in mind how late the XP theme came after XP was first introduced, they are still on schedule.
nerd1 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link
Samsung just followed mainstream customers and reviewers (who mostly cared for look and feel), and market seems to quite like sammy's decision.Uplink10 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link
Leaving MicroSD card slot is not a mainstream decision but a decision out of greed. It is costlier to buy a phone with bigger memory than to stick in a MicroSD card.jet57 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link
h265 encode is mentioned as a capability of the SoC, but does the S6 record video using that codec, in any size? I'm very keen for this as I love the idea of 4K video but have reservations over handling gigantic h264 files that could be half the size if they used h265.jasonb16 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link
How's voice quality.