Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 vs Mediatek MT8173C vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2
Qualcomm Snapdragon 625
► remove from comparisonThe 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.
Mediatek MT8173C
► remove from comparisonThe Mediatek MT8173C is an upper mainstream ARM SoC (System on a chip) that was introduced in March 2015 and is primarily used for Android based tablets and Chromebooks. It is manufactured in a 28 nm process and has a total of four CPU cores with two Cortex-A72 and two Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. The graphics unit is based on the IMG Series 6XT (Rogue) and has the designation PowerVR GX6250. Among others, the GPU includes a video decoder with 4K and H.265 support.
Processor
The biggest highlight of the SoC are the new Cortex-A72 cores, which can be seen as the successors to the Cortex-A57 design. ARM promises much more performance in combination with reduced power consumption, which results in an excellent per-thread performance with the very high maximum clock of 2.4 GHz. The architecture is based on ARMv8-ISA and therefore supports 64-bit.
The two slower, but therefore very frugal Cortex-A53 cores (clocks unknown, probably around 1.5 GHz) are supposed to reduce the power consumption and are always active with light workloads. The big.LITTLE configuration also allows the simultaneous use of all four cores (or any combination of cores from both clusters), so the MT8173C can be called a real quad-core.
Graphics
The graphics unit is based on Series 6XT (Rogue) from IMG and has the designation PowerVR GX6250. The 2-cluster chip has a unified-shader architecture with a total of 64 FP32 ALUs as well as 4 TMUs. Thanks to the comparatively high maximum clock of 700 MHz, the performance is roughly on par with the PowerVR G6430 in the iPhone 5s. High-resolution screens and complex Android games from 2015 are usually no problem for the GPU.
Features
Besides CPU and GPU, the chip is also equipped with an LPDDR3 memory controller (2x 32-bit, probably up to 933 MHz, 14.9 GB/s), but no wireless modem. The maximum display resolution is 2560 x 1600 pixels. Another highlight is the integrated video engine, which even supports 4K material and the modern H.265 codec.
Power Consumption
The MT8173 is manufactured in an 28 nm process and should have a average up to high power consumption. It can still be used in tablets and laptops without limitations.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2
► remove from comparisonThe Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 is a mid-range ARMv8-based SoC largely for Android tablets and smartphones. Announced in February 2014, the S616 is one of the first 64-bit capable SoCs from Qualcomm. In addition to 8 Cortex-A53 CPU cores at up to 1.7 GHz (power saving cluster max. 1.2 GHz), the SoC integrates an Adreno 405 GPU with a 2x 32-bit memory controller (LPDDR3-1600, 12.8 GB/s) and supports Wi-Fi (802.11ac), Bluetooth 4.0, UMTS, and LTE.
CPU
The Cortex-A53 is the successor to the very popular Cortex-A7 design. In addition to the new 64-bit capable ARMv8 ISA, the cores offer a variety of other improvements such as better branch prediction. This leads to a significantly higher performance per clock, which is even above the older Cortex-A9.
The eight cores of the Snapdragon 616 are divided into two quad-core clusters, each optimized for a different operating point. While one cluster can clock up to 1.7 GHz to handle more demanding applications, the other cluster is limited to a maximum of 1.2 GHz for energy-saving purposes. All eight cores can be active at the same time, although most applications aren't parallelized to support 8 cores efficiently.
Overall, the Snapdragon 615 offers a performance similar to that of the older Snapdragon 600 (Krait architecture).
GPU
Another new feature is the integrated graphics unit named Adreno 405 (550 MHz most likely). The Adreno 400 series has been substantially redesigned and supports DirectX 11.2 (FL 11_1) including hardware tessellation, OpenGL ES 3.1, and OpenCL 1.2. Furthermore, the performance has been significantly improved, which is now similar to the Adreno 320 and PowerVR G6200.
Features
The Snapdragon 616 offers numerous wireless technologies such as Bluetooth 4.0 and WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac as well as a Multi-SIM cellular modem supporting LTE cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbps), WCDMA, CDMA, EV-DO, TD-SCDMA and GSM/EDGE.
The SoC can encode and decode 1080p videos using dedicated hardware and stream content to displays with up to 2560 x 2048 pixels. A large number of video codecs including H.265 (playback only) will be supported. The camera ISP can handle sensors with up to 21 MP.
Power Consumption
The Snapdragon 616 is manufactured by TSMC in a 28 nm LP process. According to the specifications, we expect a medium or medium-high power consumption for use in medium-sized or larger smartphones and tablets.
Model | Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 | Mediatek MT8173C | Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Series | Qualcomm Snapdragon | Mediatek | Qualcomm Snapdragon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Codename | Cortex-A53 | Cortex-A72/-A53 | Cortex-A53 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Series: Snapdragon Cortex-A53 |
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Clock | 2000 MHz | 2100 MHz | 1700 MHz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cores / Threads | 8 / 8 | 4 / 4 | 8 / 8 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Technology | 14 nm | 28 nm | 28 nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Features | Adreno 506 GPU, 802.11ac WLAN, Bluetooth 4.1, LTE Cat. 7, Dual-Channel LPDDR3-1866 Memory Controller | 20 MP Camera ISP, 4K Video Encoder, H.265, PowerVR GX6250 GPU | Adreno 405 GPU, WLAN 802.11ac (1x1), Bluetooth 4.0, LTE Cat. 4, FM, GNSS, 1x 32 Bit LPDDR3-1600 Memory Controller | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
iGPU | Qualcomm Adreno 506 | PowerVR GX6250 (? - 700 MHz) | Qualcomm Adreno 405 ( - 550 MHz) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Architecture | ARM | ARM | ARM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Announced | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manufacturer | www.qualcomm.com | www.qualcomm.com |