Snapdragon 820 vs A9 vs Exynos 8890 vs Helio X20 benchmark chart scores one for Apple

posted by Daniel P. / Nov 12, 2015, 9:53 AM

Snapdragon vs Exynos vs Apple AX vs Kirin vs MediaTek historical performance benchmark chart

If you have been waiting for the Grand Slam of mobile chipset benchmarks, after Snapdragon 820 and Exynos 8 Octa were just announced, today is your lucky day, as you can not only see them pitted against each other, but also against Apple's A9, Huawei's newest Kirin 950, and Helio X20 from MediaTek - the who is who of mobile silicon.

As you can see in the graphics above, coming from the same source that leaked the A9 benchmarks before the iPhone 6s was even announced, it's Apple's chipset that still rules the single-core performance charts. Of course, the Snapdragon 820 benchmarks have likely been collected from tests on a Qualcomm reference platform, as there is still no device with it on the market, and ditto for the Exynos 8890 that just got announced, so we might see the rankings change when these two hit the shelves in a finished product.

Furthermore, the multi-core performance of the new Exynos is most probably going to be crushing everyone else, but when it comes to single-core, and on a clock-for-clock basis, Apple's custom A9 is quite the beast. The other interesting phenomenon observed from this historical mobile chipset benchmarks chart, is that the newest Snapdragon and Exynos SoCs are almost on par in their core performance, which might explain the rumor that Samsung may be using those as interchangeable in its upcoming Galaxy S7.

source: Weibo via G4Games

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170 Comments

1. vishalaestro

Posts: 81; Member since: Dec 08, 2013

still snapdragon can't beat Apple?

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 9:57 AM 23

5. roldefol

Posts: 4744; Member since: Jan 28, 2011

Who cares? At least it's running neck and neck with the Exynos.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 10:00 AM 6

48. sgodsell

Posts: 6739; Member since: Mar 16, 2013

All of the competition will most likely continue to crush Apple in the multi-core benchmarks. Considering most of the OS use multiple threads to run, then multiple cores is more real world, instead of a single core test.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 10:58 AM 38

78. Acer_Predator unregistered

exactly there is no use of single core all aplications auto uses multi cores only stupid idion in geek bench made single core benchmark that naive ppl will see biiig high number :DDD

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 12:06 PM 12

149. vincelongman

Posts: 5611; Member since: Feb 10, 2013

Currently games still have poor multi core usage Its due to OpenGL ES not being being a low level API, it doesn't scale well for multi core But hopefully Android N brings Vulkan support, which would allow games to scale far better Other than games, some websites with heavy javascript don't scale as well IMO single and multi core are equally important on Android

posted on Nov 13, 2015, 2:59 AM 1

150. Shocky unregistered

Games on mobile devices don't need much in the way of CPU performance so it doesn't really matter yet, hopefully that will change. It's not like they have complicated physics engines and character AI to process so they barely get used. They're entirely GPU limited.

posted on Nov 13, 2015, 3:48 AM 1

152. vincelongman

Posts: 5611; Member since: Feb 10, 2013

That's true too I was more trying to point out a specific area which doesn't scale well for multi cores But game loading speeds do tend to be noticeably faster on e.g. the iPhone 6S+ than the S6 or 6P, whereas the S6/6P are usually equal in other app and web loading speeds, but then again the 6S+ does have a much newer and faster GPU

posted on Nov 13, 2015, 4:35 AM 0

157. Shocky unregistered

I understand what you were trying to say but how is it meant to scale when the games is are GPU limited? You could put i7 4790k in there and it still wouldn't scale with that mobile GPU, game loading speeds are more to do with the speed of the flash storage than the CPU. The iPhone 6S/+ has double the read and write speeds of the Galaxy S6 so nothing to do with the CPU.

posted on Nov 13, 2015, 7:34 AM 0

165. vincelongman

Posts: 5611; Member since: Feb 10, 2013

Loading a game would be read speeds The iPhone 6S+'s real world read speed would vary because of the way its storage solution works It is mainly TLC NAND, which is slower than the MLC NAND in most phones, as seen in the random read/write speeds where it can't predict what to do with the SLC NAND cache as well But has a SLC NAND cache which is significantly faster than MLC NAND, as seen in sequential read/write speeds So depending on the size of its SLC NAND cache, it may not even be in play if it's not big enough to hold the games files, so I wouldn't rule out the CPU

posted on Nov 13, 2015, 2:57 PM 0

169. Emacs244

Posts: 9; Member since: Oct 29, 2015

> some websites All websites. Websites are running by blink and V8 js engine typically on android. Both blink (chrome web engine) and V8 are single-threaded. Thus, the single core score reflects web pages execution performance directly. > Currently games still have poor multi core usage Parallel programming is extremely bug-prone and just complicated thing. The majority of algorithms just cannot be effectively parallelized and that's why the single core performance is still more valuable than multic core.

posted on Dec 10, 2015, 11:02 PM 0

170. Emacs244

Posts: 9; Member since: Oct 29, 2015

Sorry, you hardly realize what are you talking about.

posted on Dec 10, 2015, 11:04 PM 0

166. cheetah2k

Posts: 2159; Member since: Jan 16, 2011

How does the A9 go on a 2k screen? Let me tell you not very well

posted on Nov 14, 2015, 12:09 AM 1

167. strudelz100

Posts: 646; Member since: Aug 20, 2014

Could easily handle multiple 2K displays with the A9 GPU.

posted on Nov 14, 2015, 9:27 PM 0

8. tedkord

Posts: 17094; Member since: Jun 17, 2009

They do.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 10:04 AM 6

66. techandbeers

Posts: 110; Member since: Nov 02, 2015

They don't

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 11:36 AM 9

168. tedkord

Posts: 17094; Member since: Jun 17, 2009

Yrs, they do. The multicore does are there to see.

posted on Nov 16, 2015, 3:54 AM 1

14. Martin_Cooper

Posts: 1774; Member since: Jul 30, 2013

No one who buys android phones cares if snapdragon can beat apple's cpu simply cause apple don't make android phones and no one else can make an iOS phone. But its good to know how they all compare and are progressing of course.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 10:22 AM 23

129. NoToFanboys

Posts: 3231; Member since: Oct 03, 2015

+1 Great comment

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 4:54 PM 2

136. Pattyface

Posts: 1658; Member since: Aug 20, 2014

This may be the first time I 100%agree with you.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 6:15 PM 0

151. Shocky unregistered

I care. o/

posted on Nov 13, 2015, 3:52 AM 0

19. zeeBomb

Posts: 2318; Member since: Aug 14, 2014

2016: Game of Phones

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 10:30 AM 11

21. jove39

Posts: 2137; Member since: Oct 18, 2011

Qualcomm is never going to make a cpu core that is more powerful than cpu core of apple ax series. Nvidia is only one...capable/daring to make successor of denver core that'd be more powerful than twister core.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 10:33 AM 1

32. roldefol

Posts: 4744; Member since: Jan 28, 2011

Nope, they'll just make four cores that are good as everyone else's 8 (or 10).

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 10:41 AM 5

52. tedkord

Posts: 17094; Member since: Jun 17, 2009

Maybe not individual core, but they're consistently more powerful overall.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 11:16 AM 5

90. bucky

Posts: 3771; Member since: Sep 30, 2009

by overall you mean only in multi-core I'm assuming.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 1:05 PM 2

108. marorun

Posts: 5029; Member since: Mar 30, 2015

And most games and app use multi-core so multi-core scoore is more important.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 2:48 PM 4

161. Shocky unregistered

Got proof for that? since you're saying "most games and app" you must have a source that's tested a huge number of apps, yes?

posted on Nov 13, 2015, 10:01 AM 0

109. Awalker

Posts: 1958; Member since: Aug 15, 2013

Yes. It's been that way for years now. Mobile phone chips makers excluding Apple try to maximize multicore performance. Apple focuses more on single core performance.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 2:50 PM 0

134. engineer-1701d unregistered

intel will make the move if not google remember google is looking into producing its own

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 5:29 PM 0

26. Taters

Posts: 6474; Member since: Jan 28, 2013

The title is misleading. It's typical iPhonearena reporting where they make the title favour Apple and show the only metric that the A9 wins and leaves out the other charts or put the other charts on the second page and in fine print.

posted on Nov 12, 2015, 10:37 AM 19

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