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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blueboy11 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
I give it Q4 2013 until we see true "console" gaming on a phone, but my thing will be a wireless controller along with putting it on a HDTV (tablets already kinda do this, I know, but true gaming and not steaming like OnLive) then I can safely say that we will see performance like a high-end netbook, but definitely not like a Core i7 notebook. I'm just glad that tech has advanced, abeit very slowly of course.ssj4Gogeta - Monday, January 30, 2012 - link
The fact that smartphone SoC's are approaching console graphics performance just tells you how outdated current consoles are.Shadowmaster625 - Monday, January 30, 2012 - link
There is no point in having console level graphics in a phone because it requires the thing to be plugged into a wall anyway, lest you drain your battery in an hour. What good is a phone with a dead battery? I never could get a straight answer for that. So if your going to be tethered to a wall socket, why not just play games on a frickin console?freezervv - Monday, January 30, 2012 - link
Because you're doing one of two things:A) Driving "console-level graphics" on a cell phone screen
In which case your resolution is relatively minimal, so it's not outside of the realm of possibility that power efficiency will rise far enough to make this doable with current battery technology. In any case, it's not as though electrical sockets are as rare as hydrogen stations. ;)
B) Driving "console-level graphics" on a HD television
In which case your cell phone is already plugged in. Power delivery is simply a matter of connectors.
Not seeing insurmountable problem...
B3an - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
The Adreno 225 still isn't good enough to surpass the PowerVR SGX543MP. I know this benchmark was running at a slightly higher res than the Galaxy S2's Mali-400 but this still wont be good enough to even match the SGX543MP. Also keep in mind that the CPU in the S4 is faster than the A5 in Apples toys and this GPU still fails. Not good enough IMO. Lets just hope it's this single benchmark it does poorly with.jrocks84 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
They need to get the real-world performance closer to theoretical. The theoretical processing power of the Adreno GPU's is very high but lacks efficiency due to it being a VLIW architecture derived from AMD/ATI's GPUs. This is the last Qualcomm GPU that's based on the current architecture though so they'll hopefully be better soon.MrMilli - Monday, January 30, 2012 - link
While Adreno is indeed VLIW based, it's not ATI based but made by BitBoys.zorxd - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link
Most people do not care about GPU performance on phones at this point so I think qualcomm will aim for the 99% of the non-hardcore mobile gamer market.Just like on PCs, many people are fine with an integrated GPU or a low end add-on video card.
B3an - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
It's not just about games. The whole UI is GPU accelerated on Android 4.0 (finally). These future SoC's will also be driving 1080p tablets and even possibly higher resolutions late this year, like 2560x1600.Any many people do care about the GPU, even if they dont know much about the technical side, they will certainly care when they cant run even relatively simple games on there new 1080p tablet.
Exodite - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
2D acceleration is trivial though.My 20 year old Amiga 1200 can handle that perfectly fine even at monstrous resolutions, I'm pretty sure it won't be an issue for any modern SoC.