Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 vs HiSilicon Kirin 920 vs HiSilicon Kirin 925

Qualcomm Snapdragon 625

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 (SD625) is a mid-range octa-core SoC with eight ARM Cortex-A53 cpu cores at up to 2 GHz, an Adreno 506 GPU, a DDR3L-1866 memory controller and a X9 LTE (Cat 7, 4G+, 300 Mbps down, 150 Mbps up) modem. Furthermore, the chip supports 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1. It is manufactured in 14nm FinFet. The processor performance should be similar to a HiSilicon Kirin 650, which also offers 8 Cortex A53 cores at up to 2 GHz. However, due to the modern manufacturing process, power consumption and throttling should be better with the Snapdragon 625.

HiSilicon Kirin 920

The HiSilicon Kirin 920 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC (system-on-a-chip) for smartphones and tablets. It was launched in the second half of 2014 alongside and features four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at up to 1.7 GHz. Furthermore, there are four additional Cortex-A7 cores to save power, an ARM Mali-T628 MP4 GPU and a 2x 32 bit LPDDR3 memory controller. The integrated LTE Cat. 6 modem provides download speeds of up to 300 Mbps.

HiSilicon Kirin 925

The HiSilicon Kirin 925 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC (system-on-a-chip) for smartphones and tablets. It was launched in Q3/2014 alongside the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 and features four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at up to 1.8 GHz. Furthermore, there are four additional Cortex-A7 cores at up to 1.3 GHz, an ARM Mali-T628 MP6 GPU and a 2x 32 bit LPDDR3 memory controller. The integrated LTE Cat. 6 modem provides download speeds of up to 300 Mbps.

Processor 

Compared to the commonly used Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A7 architecture, the A15 cores offer an at least 50 percent higher performance per clock, which makes the Kirin 925 one of the high-end ARM SoCs of 2014. On average, the CPU performance is roughly on par with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 or Samsung Exynos 5420. 

In addition, HiSilicon has integrated four Cortex-A7 cores clocked up to 1.3 GHz. Depending on the system load, the SoC will automatically switch between the powerful A15 cores and the more efficient A7 cores to improve power consumption and battery life in a concept ARM calls "big.LITTLE". If necessary, all eight cores can be used simultaneously, so that the chip can be described as a "true" octa-core SoC.

Graphics

Similar to the Samsung Exynos 5420, the Kirin 925 integrates a Mali-T628 MP6 GPU, which offers six shader clusters (~120 GFLOPS at 600 MHz, clock speed not confirmed). The Mali-T628 supports OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenCL 1.1 and DirectX 11 and offers a remarkable performance that is just sligthly behind the Adreno 330 (Snapdragon 800) or a PowerVR G6430 (Apple A7). Thus, the GPU can run even the most demanding Android games at high resolutions (up to 2560 x 1600 pixels) and detail settings.

Power Consumption

The Kirin 925 is manufactured in a 28nm process (TSMC HPM) and should have a power consumption similar to other high-end SoCs, e.g. the Exynos 5420. Therefore, the chip is suited for medium-sized (or bigger) smartphones as well as tablets.