Qualcomm Adreno 420 vs Qualcomm Adreno 504 vs Qualcomm Adreno 540

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 504

The Qualcomm Adreno 504 is a mobile graphics card for lower mid-range smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It is included in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 SoCs and based on the Adreno 500 architecture (like the Adreno 520 in the S820, which should be fully compatible in software).

The GPU supports modern standards like Vulkan 1.0 (according to Wikipedia), OpenGL ES 3.1 + AE (3.2 in other sources), OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 12 (FL 12.1 according to Wikipedia, 11.1 according to Qualcomm). Furthermore, the GPU supports Universal Bandwidth Compression (UBWC) to save memory bandwidth.

According to Qualcomm, the GPU is 50% faster than the previous Adreno 308 in the Snapdragon 425.

In the Snapdragon 429, the Adreno 504 is manufactured in the modern 12nm process and should be very power efficient.

Qualcomm Adreno 540

The Qualcomm Adreno 540 is an integrated graphics card in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC for smartphones. It was introduced in early 2017 and can be found in high-end Android smartphones. 

The integrated GPU is based on the optimized architecture of the Adreno 530, but features clearly improved clock speeds (710 versus 624 MHz according to Anandtech) and better thermal stability. This is also thanks to the new 10 nm process the Snapdragon 835 is produced in. In the reference smartphone from Qualcomm, the Adreno 540 is able to beat or perform at a similar level as the fastest smartphone graphics cards on the market (e.g. the ARM Mali-T880MP12, ARM Mali-G71MP8 or Apple A10 GPU). Therefore, it should be perfectly suited for demanding 3D gaming and also mobile VR and 4K displays.