Snapdragon S4 “Krait” – MSM8960 GPU Benchmark Surfaces
by Saumitra Bhagwat on January 28, 2012 1:19 PM EST- Posted in
- Qualcomm
- Snapdragon
- Krait
- GPUs
- SoCs
A NenaMark 2 benchmark score for an unknown device based on Qualcomm’s upcoming 28nm Snapdragon S4 “Krait” MSM8960 SoC has just surfaced. The device seems to have 1.5Ghz CPU, a 1024x600 resolution display powered by an Adreno 225 GPU and running Android 4.0.3.
The Adreno 225 GPU scores 54.9 fps in the benchmark. To put things in perspective, a Galaxy S2, powered by the Mali-400 MP4 scores 46.2 fps. The important difference here is that the Galaxy S2 has an 800x480 resolution display, which makes the Adreno 225’s performance that much more impressive while powering a higher resolution display.
What remains to be seen is how the Adreno 225 stacks up against the current king-of-the-hill, the PowerVR SGX543MP2, the custom GeForce GPU in Tegra 3 and other upcoming GPUs such as the Mali T-604 and whatever Apple comes up with in its A6 chip. Given the raw performance offered by these next-gen GPUs, it won’t be long before we get console-quality gaming on our handheld devices.
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B3an - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
Android already supports many gamepads. And some phones have HDMI out. With the upcoming 720p res phones, they will also output in 720p - which most X360 and PS3 games run at. All thats needed is for a developer to support a gamepad and thats it.Ilfirin - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
You're seriously going to carry around a gamepad with your phone everywhere?Solidstate89 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
I believe by the time a portable media device such as a phone or tablet will have "console quality graphics" we'll already be on the next-gen of consoles making the whole comment I keep hearing everytime there's a new generation of Mobile GPUs quite moot.And of course I don't see it ever reaching PC-graphic levels, that's for sure.
MonkeyPaw - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
Well that's a bit of a silly comment. Of course it won't match PC-quality graphics (I assume you mean high end). We are talking about hundreds of watts consumed by the GPU alone on the desktop. The comparison to consoles is valid, as millions deem console graphics acceptable based on the success alone. It also makes for a good comparison, since a benchmark doesn't really say much to the average person.What would be rather cool is a 10" tablet syncing up with a wireless 360 controller. If you could play full-blown console games on the go, that would be impressive and appealing. That's the thing, it takes real games to leverage the value of this. If all we have to play are the simple $2 touch apps of today, all this graphics power is meaningless.
abhaxus - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
I agree about needing better games. That's part of the reason I bought GTA for Android. I really have very little desire to play it, but it would be nice to see more big name games coming to android.tipoo - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
That's exactly it, the chips in these tablets and phones should in theory easily rival last-generation consoles and close on the current generation in 2-3 years, but as long as app costs are capped we will never see a well funded game come out for them. Its all about whether or not the developer thinks they can comfortably make up the development cost, and going from charging 60 dollars for a new console games to a max of what, 6, 7 dollars on Android or less on iOS means big sacrifices.badmiker - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
Very fancy speeds, this however us somewhat irrelevant to the real world at the moment. The real potential of this chip is the power efficiency potential due to the 28nm size. A quick GPU, with a good battery life would be truly amazing.skydrome1 - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
I would like to see the Adreno 320 (Q4 2012 or Q1 2013) in the next Xperia Play. Either that, or the G6400.I think the G6400 would be faster though. Backwards compatibility with the PS Vita would be an added bonus!
With regard to the 225 found in the MSM8960, it's still based on the same design as the 220, with added bandwidth, a few tweaks and better drivers. Given that Anandtech did a comparison previously (I forgot which article, am a bit lazy to dig it up now, think it's the iPad 2 review or the 4S review) and found that the 220 should have the same compute performance as the SGX543MP2, this could tie the SGX543MP2.
It follows that this would beat Tegra 3's ULP GeForce too, but lose out to the upcoming A6. This also definitely loses to the Vita's 543MP4+.
Good times! Coincidentally, my contract's up in Q4 this year. So maybe, just maybe, my next phone would negate a need for a PS Vita! Please, Sony, make it happen! :)
tipoo - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
Tegra 3 in Egypt Pro offscreen gets 78FPS, the Mali 400 gets 67. However, is that difference that big considering the latter is paired with an older dual core CPU? How do we know the higher score in the former isn't due to core count, and a quad core A9 CPU would do better with a Mali 400?http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5163/42749...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4951/41613...
I'll be waiting for some benchmarks of the Adreno 225 on an offscreen benchmark like this where resolution won't skew results. On paper, the Adreno looks great, but historically it hasn't been able to stack up in real-world results due to lower efficiency.
Lucian Armasu - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
Egypt only measures the GPU, does it not?