Samsung Exynos 7870 Octa vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 415 MSM8929

Samsung Exynos 7870 Octa

The Samsung Exynos 7 Octa is a 64-bit SoC for mainstream smartphones and tablets (usually Android based). It was announced in February 2016 and integrates eight Cortex-A53 cores, which are manufactured in a modern 14-nm process. Compared to the previous 28-nm-SoCs, the performance was increased and the power consumption is 30 % lower according to Samsung. The integrated LZE Cat.6 modem reaches transfer rates of up to 300 Mbps (downstream) and 50 Mbps (upstream). The dual-channel memory controller supports LPDDR3-1866 RAM.

The integrated graphics adapter is an ARM Mali-T830 MP1 (core clock of 700 MHz according to Wikipedia). Besides OpenGL ES 3.2, it also supports OpenCL 1.2 as well as DirectX 11 (FL 9_3). The performance is sufficient for common Android games from 2016 at medium details.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 450

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 (SD450) is a lower mainstream SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. It features eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores at up to 1.8 GHz and is already manufactured in the power efficient 14nm process. The integrated X9 LTE modem supports Cat. 7 with maximum transfer rates of 300 Mbps (downstream) and 150 Mbps (upstream). The SoC also includes an Adreno 506 GPU with support for Vulkan and OpenGL ES 3.1. WiFi 802.11ac (1x1, max 364 Mbps) and Bluetooth 4.1 are supported as well. The memory controller supports LPDDR3 (single channel) and the integrated video engine supports H.264 (encode and decode) and HEVC (only decode) in 1080p.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 415 MSM8929

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 415 (8929) is an ARM-based mid-range SoC for tablets and smartphones (mostly Android based). It was announced in February 2015 and integrates eight 64-Bit Cortex-A53 CPU cores (octa-core) that clock with up to 1.4 GHz. Furthermore, there is a Adreno 405 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (max. 667 MHz, 5.3 GB/s) and wireless radios for WiFi and 4G/LTE included in the chip.

The Cortex-A53 is the successor of the entry level Cortex-A7 CPU cores. The A53 is now capable of 64 Bit (ARMv8-ISA) and adressing more than 4 GB RAM. According to ARM the performance per MHz is a lot better and even surpasses a Cortex-A9 core.

The integrated Adreno 405 is clocked with about 500 MHz and supports DirectX 11.1 incl. hardware Tesselation, OpenGL ES 3.1 and OpenCL 1.2.

The integrated wireless radios support WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, 2G, 3G and 4G (LTE Cat.4) standards. Futhermore, the SoC is able to decode 1080p videos in H.265 (encode only in H.264) and cameras with up to 13 MP.

The power consumption of the chip is ranging in the mid range, and therefore it is also suited for smaller smartphones.