The Chinese translation of SoC is "system on chip", which includes CPU, GPU and other components directly related to performance and speed. Its strength directly affects the daily use of mobile phones, the fluency of games, and many other experiences such as fever. Therefore, consumers should consider SoC as an important indicator when purchasing mobile phones.
The Galaxy A9 (2016) is Samsung's latest mid tier masterpiece. In addition to its excellent body design and large capacity battery, it also has a big selling point that it uses the world's first Snapdragon 652 processor. How about its actual performance? Let's discuss today:
Qualcomm, the largest mobile phone SoC manufacturer, is divided into four Snapdragon 200/400/600/800 series, with Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon 800 series in charge of high-end mobile phones. The previous Snapdragon 615/616 and the high-end Snapdragon 808/810 have huge performance differences, but the newly launched Snapdragon 650/652 has blurred the boundaries of Qualcomm's mid and high-end SoC with ferocious parameters.
From the parameter information, the most obvious improvement of Snapdragon 652 is the new Cortex-A72 architecture core, compared with Snapdragon 615, 616 and other products with the same mid end positioning. Except that the manufacturing process lags behind the Snapdragon 808, the memory bandwidth/frequency/GPU, which affects the reaction speed and game performance, has significantly improved, and has caught up with flagship products such as MT6795 and Snapdragon 808.
But to what extent can this SoC actually go? What are the performance improvements that affect the user experience? Therefore, we conducted relevant tests for this purpose, including Samsung Galaxy A9 (2016) with Snapdragon 652, LG G4 and Lemon X3 with Snapdragon 808, and Google Nexus 6 (Moto) with Snapdragon 805 OEM), the top version of Xiaomi Note equipped with Snapdragon 810, Galaxy Note4 equipped with Exynos 5433, OPPO R7s equipped with MT6795, and R7 Plus equipped with Snapdragon 615, including mobile phones with medium and high-end positioning.
Extreme operating performance
First, conduct pi and RAR tests to assess the CPU's multi-threaded computing ability. The higher the score is, the faster the program runs and responds. Direct use of the appearance means faster startup, faster software opening and loading, and less stuck.
The performance of the Snapdragon 652 of the Galaxy A9 (2016) is very eye-catching, especially in the Pi test, which has surpassed the top version of the Galaxy Note 4 and Xiaomi Note.
Single core absolute performance
For many applications that do not support multithreading, they need strong single core absolute performance to perform better. In the commonly used Geekbench 3 test, the single core score tests the absolute performance of the CPU's strongest core. SoCs like MT6795, which are "stacked" with eight weaker cores, have high multi-core scores, but they will show their true colors in the test of single core performance.
The Galaxy A9 (2016) has a very strong and eye-catching performance. The 1.8GHz A72 core single core performance on the Snapdragon 652 has surpassed the 2.0 GHz A57 Snapdragon 810. The Samsung Galaxy A9 (2016) has better processing performance than the mobile phone with Snapdragon 810 when using single/dual large cores in daily use.
Performance stability
Many multi-core processors have strong single core absolute performance, but the power consumption of multi-core operation is too large. Once multi-core processors are turned on simultaneously, they will generate heat and reduce frequency, which will seriously affect the speed performance of high load or long-term tasks. Therefore, Geekbench 3 multi-core test is required to test the multi-core processing performance and frequency stability of the processor, and catch the hot monster of Snapdragon 810, which is strong in single core but can reduce the frequency of multi-core when running.
The performance of Snapdragon 652 here also proves that it is also excellent in frequency stability. When users use it for a long time, the performance drops significantly less than that of other mobile phones. Even if they use it for a long time, there will be no heating problem of high-end SoCs such as Snapdragon 810.
GPU graphics/game performance
The GFXBench test is a famous cross platform GPU graphics/game performance "benchmark". The Manhattan and Tyrannosaurus Rex scenes are used to test the GPU graphics and game performance of mobile phones. The smoothness of mobile phone playing large games and soft solution HD high bit rate video will be reflected in the test scores.
The Adreno 510 on the Galaxy A9 (2016) has given us a big surprise. Compared with the G6200 (MT6795) and Adreno 405 (Snapdragon 615) used in previous mid tier products, the overall graphics processing performance has reached the same level as that of the mobile phones using Snapdragon 808, combined with stronger CPU performance, The Galaxy A9 (2016) will have a stronger and smoother performance in the game than the Snapdragon 808.
Actual application comparison video
In addition to theoretical scoring, we also test the performance of the Galaxy A9 (2016) through the video comparison of actual applications. The test comparison is the Google Nexus 5X using the Snapdragon 808.
The latter is not famous because Google withdrew from the Chinese market and did not sell in China. However, it is the famous Google "Nexus" and has many foreign supporters. The machine is manufactured by LG, plus the true native Android 6.0 system and LG hardware tuning, it should be the most standard Snapdragon 808 benchmark.
Test items:
For folder compression comparison, use a 562MB folder (including 5 files, one of which is more than 500MB) for compression test to test the CPU multithreading performance. The mobile phones that perform better in the test will perform faster in the multithreaded application. For the inherently multithreaded Android system, the multi-core performance will directly affect the smoothness of the machine after opening multiple applications.
GBA simulator frame number test to test the peak performance of CPU single core. Most of the daily applications use 1~2 large cores (taking the big LITTLE architecture as an example). The stronger CPU peak performance enables the mobile phone to have faster response speed and shorter load time.
HD video soft solution test to test CPU multithreading performance and stability. Mobile phones with strong capabilities in this area can satisfy some users who like to watch videos. Some videos that cannot be decoded by hardware can be played by software decoding. The higher the frame number, the better the smoothness. At the same time, it is also a means to consider the performance of CPU multithreading.
Galaxy A9 (2016) VS Nexus 5X Performance Comparison Video
It can be seen from the video that the Galaxy A9 (2016) performs better than the Nexus 5X in three tests, and has overwhelming advantages in all three tests.
summary
In the test of extreme operation performance, single core absolute performance and GPU graphics/game performance, it is due to the use of the latest A72 architecture of ARM. Snapdragon 652 has the performance of rolling over products with the same positioning, even attacking high-end products. In addition, its performance stability is unexpectedly high, even putting great pressure on Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 810.
To sum up, Snapdragon 652 is a powerful and balanced processor, quite like Snapdragon 801. Snapdragon 652, with its mid-range title, has shown its flagship performance. It is one of the biggest dark horses in the mobile processor market in recent years.
With SoC's leadership, the Galaxy A9 (2016) has flagship performance in speed/performance related projects such as application opening, loading, response speed and game fluency. There is no doubt that the Galaxy A9 (2016) is now the most powerful mid-range mobile phone in active service. With excellent appearance design and materials, it also highlights its competitiveness among mobile phones at the same price. It is estimated that the appearance of Snapdragon 652 will bring a big reshuffle to the mid end mobile phones in 2016.
