System Performance

Whilst the controlled performance tests are heavily favouring the Dimensity 1000L powered Reno3 5G, what also matters in user experience in daily usage is the overall system performance, including the device’s software stack and the SoC’s scheduler settings. In that regard, we’ve haven’t really tested a MediaTek device in several years now.

PCMark Work 2.0 - Web Browsing 2.0

In PCMark’s web browsing test, none of the Reno3 phones showcase very convincing results as we’re seeing scores well below the average flagship device today – but that’s to be expected given these phones are targeted at the mid-range.

PCMark Work 2.0 - Writing 2.0

The writing test is a more representative workload for daily user experiences. Here both the D1000L and S765 Reno3 phones performs in line with their mid-range nature and perform extremely close to each other. The Helio P90 based global Reno3 Pro doesn’t fare well at all here as it’s a clear tier below other phones.

PCMark Work 2.0 - Photo Editing 2.0

In the photo editing test which makes use of Renderscript and loads the GPU, the MediaTek Reno3 5G is ahead of its P95 sibling as well as the Snapdragon 765 counterpart.

PCMark Work 2.0 - Data Manipulation

In the data-manipulation score, the Reno3 phones are all performing close to each other.

PCMark Work 2.0 - Performance

In the overall PCMark scores, we achieve the expected hierarchy between the devices, although the absolute score differences are quite smaller than we would have imagined.

WebXPRT 3 - OS WebView Speedometer 2.0 - OS WebView JetStream 2 - OS Webview

In the web-browser based JavaScript benchmarks, we’re seeing the Snapdragon 765 notably outperform the Dimensity 1000L chipset which oddly enough falls behind by quite a bit. I’m not too sure of why this would be, but it’s possible that these heavier workloads are more memory-bound and thus Qualcomm’s superior memory latency performance is helping it pull ahead of the MediaTek chipsets.

As we hadn’t measured a MediaTek chipset in quite a few years, I was curious as to how their scheduler performs in relation to what we know of other SoCs such as from Qualcomm, HiSilicon, Samsung or even Apple. We’re using our internal workload performance ramp test for this task:

Surprisingly, MediaTek’s Dimensity 1000L performed massively better than any other SoC on the market, scaling up from idle to maximum frequency on the performance cores in just 4.2ms. The Snapdragon 765 Reno3 Pro 5G here took a more conventional stepped ramp-up approach, reaching the maximum performance state in 78ms.

I was quite astounded to see such an aggressive scheduler behaviour on the MediaTek chipset – it seems their scheduler will wake up tasks at maximum frequency very quickly and ramp down from there, instead of ramping up performance gradually. It’s a big difference, and it’s seemingly a lot more aggressive than any other SoC on the market.

I’m still not sure how this translates into more natural workloads with intermediate load behaviours – both the Reno3 5G and Reno3 Pro 5G both performed quite similarly in subjective device usages, with the MediaTek variant only pulling ahead under more notable workloads such as installing applications.

Snapdragon 765G vs Dimensity 1000L GPU Performance
Comments Locked

44 Comments

View All Comments

  • DanNeely - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link

    On the last page this paragraph is present twice:

    "Although the MediaTek chip has been out for several months now, we still have only seen a handful of devices using it, while in recent months we’ve seen a ton of Snapdragon 765 devices being announced and released."
  • leexgx - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link

    quite surprising really as that phone was released about like 9 months ago (december 2019) and no one else has been using the Dimensity 1000L

    they should have been trying to push it out far more, but for them to say that well we are waiting for Q3 2020 before we go worldwide is surprising

    it already has full EU/UK 4G and 5G support, 40 2.3ghz and n70 3.5Ghz

    unsure if it will follow some of the newer 5G phones that can use like the "Oppo Find X2 Neo 5G,the snap 765G" as tah phone can also do {n1/3/5/7/28, witch is basically converting the 4G bands into 5g} at later date
  • leexgx - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link

    (n78 not n70)
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link

    Yeah having read this article I will certainly not buy one of these snapdragon765 phones and wait for such with 1000L.
  • Mikad - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link

    The link in the sentence "grave limbo and run the risk of no longer seeing successors in the future" seems to be pointing into a local hard drive.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link

    No idea how that happened- fixed.
  • liteon163 - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link

    It would be nice if I could get an affordable vivo iQOO Z1 that worked on AT&T here in the US. I'd definitely purchase one, simply out of curiosity if nothing else.
  • name99 - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link

    "These are quite terrible results for the Imagination GPU, and in hindsight, makes their claim of a 2.5x performance increase with the new A-Series GPU look a lot less impressive"

    Not to mention the good old "Apple stole the PowerVR design and all they have done since then is just tweak it slightly"... You still see a fair bit of that around the interwebs.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link

    They didn't steal it, they just have an architectural license. The first GPUs for years were exactly that, tweaked designs that eventually morphed apart.
  • Gnyueh - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link

    Xiaomi has announced Redmi K30 ultra with Dimensity 1000+ just now and it will be definitely an interesting product to test. There are a lot of products with MTK Dimensity SoCs but most of them are only available in China.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now