Qualcomm Adreno 420 vs Qualcomm Adreno 418 vs Qualcomm Adreno 430

Qualcomm Adreno 420

The Qualcomm Adreno 420 is an integrated graphics card for (mostly Android based) smartphones and tablets. It was introduced in the middle of 2014 and is integrated in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 SoC. The graphics card uses a technology called FlexRender. It can switch "intelligently" between TBR (TBR Tile Based Renderer) and the classic direct rendering. It supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and DirectX 11.2 Feature Level 11_1 (compared to ES 3.0 and DirectX 9_3 of the Adreno 330).

The graphics clock rate of the Adreno 420 differs from the used SoC and where it is built in. At launch it ranges from 500 to 600 MHz in the Snapdragon 805 APQ8084.

According to Qualcomm, the power consumption in comparison to the Snapdragon 800 has been reduced by up to 20% running GFXBench 2.7 T-Rex, while delivering up to 40% more performance. First benchmarks show even bigger gains; however, the performance will decrease over time to prevent too high temperatures (especially in smartphones). This is common amongst many other ARM SoCs. Nevertheless, the Adreno 420 beats the Mali-T628 MP6 (Samsung Exynos 5420/5430) as well as the PowerVR G6430 (Apple A7) and is one of the fastest mobile GPUs in mid-2014, but still significantly slower than the Nvidia Tegra K1 or the PowerVR GX6650 in Apple's A8X SoC (both mainly tablet GPUs).

Qualcomm Adreno 418

The Qualcomm Adreno 418 is an integrated graphics card for (mostly Android based) smartphones and tablets. It is integrated in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 SoC and was announced in mid 2014. The GPU supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and DirectX 11 feature level 11_1 (with hardware tessellation). The graphics card uses a technology called FlexRender to intelligently switch between TBR (TBR Tile Based Renderer) and the classic direct rendering.

Compared to the Adreno 420, the performance of the 418 is about 20 percent slower (at 600 MHz). This puts the Adreno 418 in the upper middle class in 2015 and even demanding (Android) games should run fluently.

Qualcomm Adreno 430

The Qualcomm Adreno 430 is an integrated graphics card for (mostly Android based) smartphones and tablets. It was introduced in the beginning of 2015 and is integrated in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC. The graphics card uses a technology called FlexRender. It can switch "intelligently" between TBR (TBR Tile Based Renderer) and the classic direct rendering. It supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and DirectX 11.2 Feature Level 11_1 (compared to ES 3.0 and DirectX 9_3 of the Adreno 330).

The GPU uses 192 unified shaders clocked at up to 650 MHz. In 2015 it belongs to the fastest GPU for smartphones. It positions itself between the PowerVR GX6450 in the Apple A8 and the ARM Mali-T760 MP8 in the Samsung Exynos 7420.

Although the Snapdragon 810 is already manufactured in 20nm, heat can still be an issue (especially in smartphones). This leads to reduced clock rates and performance during continuous load.