2012 is the era of quad core mobile phones, and quad core SoC brings more powerful performance and better experience to mobile phones. This year, Cortex-A15 officially came into people's view, and Qualcomm also launched Krait 400 core 。 As it happens, Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 has two models And Snapdragon 800, whose performance is better?

Specification comparison

First, let's introduce the two mobile phones tested this time, namely the international version of the Galaxy S4 (model GT-I9500) and the Korean version of the Galaxy S4 LTE-A (model SHV-E330s). The following is the specification comparison chart:

From the configuration point of view, the biggest difference between the two is that the SoC and the supported network, and the other aspects such as the screen, RAM, camera, battery, etc. are completely consistent. The difference between SoCs is the most important part of our comparative evaluation. What are the differences between the two top SoCs in performance, heating, power consumption and other aspects? In addition, the E330s supports LTE and LTE-A networks, which of course has no practical significance for domestic users. The E330S comes with a 32G ROM and dual charging, and the 32G version of the I9500 has also appeared on the market.

I9500 left, E330S ▼ right

And last Similarly, our performance comparison is still divided into three parts: CPU, GPU and hardware decoding performance 。 In addition to performance, we will also test the endurance and heat of these two phones.

CPU

In terms of frequency, the Snapdragon 800 2.3GHz of the E330S is much higher than the Exynos 5410 1.6GHz of the I9500. But we know that the same frequency performance of the Cortex-A15 is absolutely invincible, far from being comparable to the Krait core. What will be the result of this contest with a wide range of frequencies?

Theoretical run test

Rabbit evaluation (left E330S, right I9500) ▼

Judging from the score run of Anthare, the E330S will completely overwhelm the I9500 in terms of both total score and various scores. Of course, it can only be used as a reference here. Is it really one-sided in practical application?

Vellamo (left E330S, right I9500) ▼

This is a web testing software launched by Qualcomm, which mainly tests the HTML5 performance of mobile phones. The E330s achieved excellent results, In particular, the HTML5 test part is more powerful than Tegra 4, and the Metal part is also very close to Tegra 4. Both tests are more than I9500 。

Pi (left E330S, right I9500) ▼

The test is the floating point performance of the CPU. This application is very similar to the SuperPi commonly used in PC evaluation. The performance of the E330s is still strong, The performance even exceeded that of the AT703 using Tegra 4 1.8GHz, and the test was completed in less than 29 seconds 。

General performance test

Sunspider 1.0.1

The latest version of Sunspider can test the single core performance of the CPU. Of course, it has a lot to do with the Javascript performance of the browser. Since Samsung's own processor has a "magic oil" for this score, the lower the score, the better (left E330s, right I9500) ▼

From the test results, compared with the previous Krait 200 and Krait 300 processors, the high-frequency Krait 400 on the E330S performs extremely well, All processors except the Cortex-A15 have been exploded, but there is still a gap of about 100ms compared with the I9500 。

Video soft solution

Video software decoding is also an important test project to measure the general performance of the CPU. This test project tests the multithreading performance of the CPU, which is different from the video hard solution. It is a method to test the general computing power of the CPU, and multi-core processors will be used. The following tests use BSPlayer version 1.9.

E330S， Average frames 35.85 ▼

I9500， Average frames 39.3 ▼

In terms of achievements, I9500 is still ahead of E330s Here again shows the powerful strength of Cortex-A15. From the perspective of frequency, The I9500 frequency is reduced to the quad core 1.2GHz, while the E330s can basically maintain the high frequency of 2.265GHz Although the frequency of A15 is so low, its performance is still better.

Demo video

Some descriptions of the video: An apk of about 50MB is used for application installation, Chrome Beta V29 is used for web page testing, and ZArchiver is used for compressed folders with a folder size of more than 500MB. From the video, we can see that E330s has great advantages in application installation, folder compression, and game loading. In addition, we can also see from the video that the screen of the I9500 is much yellow, which may be a problem with the screen batch, or the screen quality of the Korean version is particularly good In addition, game loading and application installation are likely to be affected by the flash speed (32G for the E330s and 16G for the I9500).

GPU

Before the Snapdragon 800, the SGX544MP3 on the I9500 had always been invincible. Even 1080P resolution was smoother than many 720P mobile phones playing games. While the Adreno 330 on the E330S stands out from the crowd in terms of theoretical performance, what about its actual performance? Let's have a look at the strong dialogue of GPU.

Theoretical run test

GFXBench 2.7.2 (left E330s, right I9500) ▼

For the old GPU performance test, the requirements for GPU performance are more stringent after version 2.7. At the same time, version 2.7 includes the 2.5 Egypt HD test. If the Tegra 4 on the AT703 and the Exynos 5410 on the I9500 are tied, the Snapdragon 800 on the E330s has finished the latter in this test, with a big gap. The gap even reached twice in the GFXBench 2.7 test, which of course has something to do with the bias of the test.

BaseMark X

E330S, On Screen: 17 frames, Off Screen: 15 frames ▼

I9500, On Screen: 9.2 frames, Off Screen: 8.8 frames ▼

This test uses Unity 4.0 engine, introduces a large number of particle effects, advanced lighting effects and post-processing, which will exert great pressure on the GPU of mobile phones, The frame number of the E330S is almost twice that of the I9500.

3DMark (left E330s, right I9500) ▼

In this test, Except that the frame number of the physical test of the E330S is close to that of the I9500, other graphic tests and demos involving the GPU are far from the competitors , once again showing the dominant performance of Adreno 330.

Anthare 3D (left E330S, right I9500) ▼

This is a 3D performance test separated from the evaluation of Anthare. Of course, the performance of the E330s is also better than that of the I9500, The difference is about 9 frames 。

Comparison chart:

From the perspective of graphic test, The E330S, with its powerful GPU specification and super Shader performance, has kept an absolute lead in all GPU runs, leaving the I9500 behind 。

Game frame number test

GPU theory score is certainly not enough. Here is also the most popular game frame test. Several large-scale games were used in the test, including Gameloft's modern war 4, Iron Man 3, Wild Racing 7 (where is the good Wild 8?), EA's top class flying car 17 and real racing car 3. During the game, FPS Meter was used for frame detection

Modern Warfare 4 1.1.0

E330S▼

I9500▼

Common test items, but the E330S's special effect performance in the test was very poor, many details of the picture were lost, and the reflection of the collimator was also lost, So the number of frames here is not comparable 。 The minor editor also tried to modify the model information of build.prop and tried to modify the special effects, but it did not work.

Iron Man 3 1.2

E330S▼

I9500▼

This is the latest game released by Gameloft. It seems that the optimization is not very good. The I9500 has only 20 frames

Wild drag racing 7 1.0.6 (Shanghai runway)

E330S▼

I9500▼

The reason for choosing this runway is that it has the greatest pressure on the GPU. In the actual measurement, the I9500 has begun to appear a slight jam, and the average frame number is only about 27 (GPU overclocking 640MHz can reach 31 frames)

Top Speed Car 17

E330S▼

I9500▼

The latest version of Jipin Feiche 17 has not been updated for a long time, and it still stays at the earlier version 1.0.47. This version has poor support for I9500. Therefore, the "divine oil version" dedicated to the PowerVR series GPU is used here, with the version number of 1.0.28, to ensure that the special effects of the two are at the same level.

Real Racing 3

E330S▼

I9500▼

In the last test of the real car 3, the I9500 can say that it is difficult to recover a game, but the situation of this game is complex, Although the average frames of the two are the same, there are some problems in the picture details (explained below) 。

Comparison of game frames:

From the comparison of five rounds of game frames, there is no doubt that E330S has great advantages But we also see many problems. For example, in Modern War 4, the special effect of I9500 is obviously higher than that of E330S, and the sawtooth image of E330S in real racing car 3 is also more than that of I9500. See the following figure for details:

I9500 (click to view the original picture) ▼

E330S (click to view the original picture) ▼

As can be seen from the enlarged drawing of the following details, The I9500 has significantly fewer image aliases than the E330s , i.e. better picture quality ▼

Hardware decoding performance

The I9500's decoding performance in the evaluation is impressive. In the past, the hard solution level of Qualcomm Quad Core can only be said to be in line. What will the performance of Snapdragon 800 be like?

Video list:

720P group

FLV AOM OP, 1280 × 720, H.263

MP4 Jay Chou's Double Cut Staff, 1280 × 720, H.264 High Profile L5.1， Bit rate 17M

AVI The Circle of Realm trailer, 1280 × 720, Xvid

WMV Microsoft WMVHD official video, 1280 × 720, VC-1, MP@HL

RMVB Dark God Theater, 1280 × 720, RV40

FLV Lord of the Rings, 1280 × 720, HEVC, 1000kbps

1080P group

MP4 Clannad OP ，1920×1080，H.264 High Profile L5. ref16

MKV Conan Theater Edition 15 trailer, 1920 × 1080, H.264 Main Profile L4.0， Audio coding AC-3

WMV Microsoft WMVHD official video, 1440 × 1080, VC-1, MP@HL

MKV Fate stay night [Realta Nua]，1920x1080p，Hi10P，23.976fps

FLV Lord of the Rings, 1920 × 1080, HEVC, 1200kbps

MP4 2160×1440，ref3，fps=30

MP4 3840×2160，ref3，fps=24

The comparison results are as follows:

It can be seen from the comparison that, The E330S has better hard solution ability than the I9500, and can support 4K video.

consume power

You may think that the "4+4" core of the I9500 consumes a lot of power, but in fact, it works with the four core A7 in daily applications, and the A15 core often suffers from frequency reduction, so the actual use is not as bad as expected. On the other hand, Qualcomm's Krait core has always been a "warm" SoC. Although the Snapdragon 800 uses the Krait 400 core, which has greatly improved its power consumption, the 2.3GHz high frequency is obviously not a fuel efficient lamp. The following is the measured power consumption ▼

In the power consumption test, the two mobile phones showed a strange similarity. Finally, the remaining power with a difference of 1% can be regarded as the error range, The endurance performance of these two mobile phones is almost the same 。

fever

Since the launch of the Galaxy S4, its fever has been controversial, especially the version of the "4+4" core is called a small nuclear bomb. The Snapdragon 800 has 2.3GHz high frequency, which makes it unable to calm down. During the test, the room temperature is 25 ℃, and the maximum temperature of the fuselage surface is measured. The test results are as follows ▼

From the test results, the Snapdragon 800 is no cooler than the Exynos 5410, The maximum surface temperature of the two mobile phones exceeds 50 ℃ when running large games Can be said to be two full hand warmers.

summary

From the comparison between E330s and I9500, we can see the gap between Snapdragon 800 and Exynos 5410 。 In terms of performance, the E330S has exceeded the I9500 in most tests 。 Although the Krait 400 is not as good as the Cortex-A15 in the same frequency performance, the huge difference in frequency has brought the efficiency back. This is the first time we have seen a Qualcomm processor with such powerful CPU performance, which definitely deserves the title of the strongest CPU in mobile phones. On the GPU side, Adreno 330's performance is more eye-catching. It's not too much to say that it can kill the SGX544MP3 in seconds In addition, Adreno 330 can fully support OpenGL ES 3.0, which has greater development space in the era of Android 4.3. Of course, some large games at this stage support SGX544MP3 better than Adreno 330. This problem can be seen from the special effects of Modern War 4 and the detailed performance of real car 3 in this test. In terms of hardware decoding performance, the Snapdragon 800 has also impressed us. It can almost perfectly support all mainstream formats. Even in the face of "4k" mp4 video, it can also be hard decoded normally. This level of hard solution can already challenge Tegra 4.

Back on the E330s and I9500, many users who have bought the I9500 will feel "trapped", and the flagship product that they have not bought for long has even produced an enhanced version. In fact, the I9500 is excellent enough in practical application. If it is not compared with AB in the test, it will not feel that the performance is insufficient. In addition, the I9500 is an "orthodox" Galaxy S4 series, which is far from comparable to the Galaxy S4 LTE-A (including the Korean E330s and the I9506 to be launched in the future) in terms of third-party ROM resources. The I9500 has many third-party kernels. After we import these kernels, we can properly overclock the CPU and GPU, and the game performance will be better than normal.

If you are a full performance controller and want to enjoy the ultimate performance, it will be a good choice to purchase the E330s. If you are a computer controller, the I9500 will bring you higher playability.

appendix

Some other questions about the E330S:

1. Because the E330s is a Korean version machine, many users are worried about the network usage. The E330S can normally support GSM and WCDMA networks in daily use There is no problem in calling and surfing the Internet. More users have tried and even supported mobile 4G networks (I haven't measured it yet).
2. EDGE needs to be cracked, which is not supported by default.
3. As for ROM, it can't be used together with other Galaxy S4 products, and its TouchWiz is different from Galaxy S4.
4. SMS problem. Many Korean version machines have problems when using Chinese SMS. The E330s already has some localized third-party ROMs that can be used. You can solve the problem by swiping in these ROMs.
5. With regard to signals, if Unicom HSPA+is also used, E330S signal strength is better than I9500 In the elevator, you can make phone calls and access the Internet (I9500 is directly disconnected in the same environment).
6. After all, the E330S is a niche machine. Now it can only be purchased through the gray channel. There are many goods in Hong Kong's Xianda Plaza. If you are patient and interested in the Snapdragon 800, you can wait for the international version or directly go to Note 3.
7. As for the camera, the I9500 uses the Sony stack camera, the sensor model is IMX135, and the I9505 uses the Sony backlight camera, the sensor model is IMX091PQ. The E330s and I9500 are the same, and the IMX135 is also used (Bonzi is really very good to himself...)
8. The I9500 uses an independent audio chip Wolfson WM5012, while the E330s does not.
9. On baseband, RF and Bluetooth, the I9500 uses Intel's baseband and RF, and Broadcom's WLAN/BT/GPS chip. Of course, the E330S uses Qualcomm's full range of solutions.

Related links:

Tegra 4 first test Toshiba AT703 hands-on experience