Android has always had a competition Running points The strange atmosphere of. Score scoring software can help us measure the performance of mobile phones, but it cannot represent the absolute performance of mobile phones. Recently Epic Games launched a "game" Epic Citadel, an epic castle. It has a built-in frame test, a fantasy engine and a large number of light and shadow effects GPU We have also tested some mainstream mobile phones in the market.

Epic Games is the world's leading developer of digital games and graphic interaction technology. It launched the famous computer games Unreal and Unreal Tournament, which are well-known shooting masterpieces. Of course, Epic Games has also developed the Unreal Engine, which has also been applied to many mobile games. Recently, Epic Games launched its own "game" epic castle Epic Citadel. Apple also showed the effect of this shocking castle roaming at the iPhone 4 launch conference. The reason why the quotation marks are used is that this game actually does not have any playability. In the game, players walk around in an ancient city in the first person vision, and more just show the gorgeous effects brought by the illusory engine, rather than some shooting and action games in the traditional sense. Compared with feeling the top visual effects of the illusory engine, Epic Citadel is more useful in its own Benchmark. It comes with a test that shows the number of frames in different scenes of the game. In addition, for the GPUs of mainstream Android phones, these scenes generate relatively large loads. Compared with the general scorecard software, Epic Citadel is more practical. In addition, for the final score given by the general score running software, the frame number of the game is more intuitive. 30fps is the basic smooth line, and 60fps is the full frame. This seems to be more understandable and practical than the scores of thousands or tens of thousands of points given by some score running software.

testing environment

Test software: Epic Citadel v1.05 for Android

HD group: Xiaomi 2, Meizu MX2, Samsung Galaxy Note II, Google Nexus 4, Lenovo K860i, HTC One X+

Full HD and above groups: HTC Butterfly, nubia Z5 (test prototype), oppo Find5, Huawei Ascend D2, Google Nexus 10

Hardware description

Xiaomi 2, Nexus 4, Butterfly, Z5, and Find5 all use Qualcomm APQ8064 with Adreno320.

The MX2, Galaxy Note II and K860i use Samsung Exynos 4412 with Mali-400MP4.

One X+uses Tegra3 with Geforce ULP.

D2 uses HiSilicon K3V2 with GC4000.

The Nexus 10 uses the Exynos 5250 with Mali-T604.

First, let's introduce the menu and scene of Epic Citadel

Epic Citadel has a grand scene with outstanding details and lighting effects, which is definitely the top level of today's games (click to view the large picture, the original picture is taken from HTC Butterfly, with a resolution of 1920 * 1080) ▼

Excellent light and shadow effect and model performance (click to view the large image, the original image is taken from HTC Butterfly, with a resolution of 1920 * 1080) ▼

There is obvious "Benchmark" in the menu (click to view the large picture, the original picture is taken from HTC Butterfly, with a resolution of 1920 * 1080) ▼

In the menu, you can set the priority of picture quality or performance in detail (the following test scores are all subject to the priority of picture quality) ▼

At the same time, you can set the resolution ▼

Number of test frames

HD group

Xiaomi 2 (Adreno3201280 * 720), known as the "little prince of running points", performs very well in the game and is close to full frame, thanks to Adreno320's super graphics processing capability ▼

MX2 (Mali-400MP41280 * 800). MX2 uses high-frequency Mali-400MP4, but its performance in the game is not very ideal, only 35 frames ▼

Galaxy Note II (Mali-400MP41280 * 720), Samsung's own SoC optimization is relatively good, with 45 frames ▼

Nexus 4 (Adreno3201280 * 768), like Xiaomi 2, the fourth son has reached the basic full frame, even higher than Xiaomi 2. It seems that Adreno320 has enough resolution to cope with the HD level ▼

K860i (Mali-400MP41280 * 720), the score of K860i is normal, and the average frame number is 39 ▼

One X+(Geforce ULP, 1280 * 720). The performance of One X+is surprising. Although the hardware indicators are much weaker than those of the competitors, the actual frame number is higher than that of Note II. It seems that Geforce ULP optimizes the illusory engine better ▼

Full HD and above

Butterfly (Adreno3201920 * 1080). Although Butterfly also uses Adreno320, due to the 1080P high resolution, Butterfly's frame number is lower than Xiaomi 2 and Nexus 4, with an average of 49.7 ▼

Z5 (Adreno3201920 * 1080), Z5 has a certain gap with Butterfly in GPU optimization, only 30.7 frames ▼

Find5 (Adreno3201920 * 1080), the performance of Find5 is between Butterfly and Z5, and the frame number is 40 ▼

D2 (GC40001920 * 1080), the GC4000 used by D2 is very difficult in the test, and the number of frames is only 20.1 ▼

Nexus 10 (Mali-T6042560 * 1600), facing the terrible resolution of 2560 * 1600, Mali-T604 is still very brave, which surprised the author. The frame number is 51.7, which is even higher than the Adreno320 with 1080P screen, which is really a rare ▼

Horizontal comparison of this test model ▼

summary

In the past GPU performance tests, the author actually added a lot of frames to the test content, which is basically achieved by matching with the third-party software fps meter. The phone itself needs root. However, games such as Epic Citadel that provide image quality selection and frame number test are rare, so it is also a good choice to use it as a measure of GPU computing performance. However, because the game itself uses the illusion engine and a large number of light and shadow effects, and the resolution of mainstream mobile phones has reached the high-definition level, this will cause great pressure on the current GPU. In the test, the product even dropped to 20 frames, which also proves that Android mobile phones need to improve their GPU computing performance. For the development of 1080P mobile phones in 2013, the improvement of GPU computing performance is more important than simply increasing the number and frequency of CPU cores. Of course, different GPUs have different data packets and different optimizations. For example, in the test, Geforce ULP has higher frames than Mali-400MP4 at the same resolution, which is the opposite of most application scenarios. Therefore, Epic Citadel is more suitable for observing the performance differences under the same GPU. For example, the test results of mobile phones using Adreno320 in this test are uneven, which shows the difference of manufacturers' optimization skills.

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