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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FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
That's what happens when "brainy", stuck up, clueless, unoriginal nerds, have no GF's and get their "feel ups" off their cellphone."Oh she feels so cheap !" " She should feel better in my hands"...
Thus, we now have the whined for apple crap.
mkozakewich - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
that feel when no sdFickleBJT - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
Would you buy a car that looked like it was made out of plastic?Remember, these are ~700 dollar phones. Asking for good materials and workmanship is perfectly reasonable. I used to own a GS3 and the paint started coming off of it after just a few months. It made the phone look awful. I would much rather have a nicer feeling and looking phone. Granted, they could have put an SD slot in there, at least in the normal variant.
loki1725 - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
"Would you buy a car that looked like it was made out of plastic?"Yes. If you've bought a mainstream car in the last ten years, it probably does have plastic in it.
Would you buy a car where the body was made of glass?
lilmoe - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link
That's just a bad analogy bro...Kvaern2 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link
The analogy is bad yes but his point is nevertheless valid.akdj - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Not really, not when some of the best, fastest and finest cars in the world are made from plastics, 'glasses' (plexi, etc) & carbon fibermaxxbot - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
So "nerds" are the driving force between Samsung and Apple's huge sales numbers? There sure must be a lot of "nerds" out there.FlushedBubblyJock - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Pride, ego, status, selfie love.Spend the big bucks for the premium status symbol, then others will love you too.
I really don't think nerd is any part of the equation - clueless herd sheeping seems to be the case.
Margalus - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
just the opposite for me. no removable sd card is a non issue with the base model having 32GB, and 64 and 128GB models available. But no removable battery with android is a show stopper. What good is a "mobile" phone if it goes dead in 4 hours while you are out and can't charge it?as for the sd card, my s4 has 9.5GB or internal and a 64GB external sd. All together I have used up about 30GB of storage over 2 years.. so a 64GB or 128GB model would be fine without an external sd card. But with a dead battery and no way to replace it, the phone is useless.