Intel Atom D525 vs Rockchip RK3188 vs Marvell PXA986

Intel Atom D525

The Intel Atom D525 is a dual core processor that is intended for nettops, but also used in netbooks (like the Asus Eee PC 1215N). It consists out of two Atom cores clocked at 1.8 GHz and due to HyperThreading, the D525 is able to process four threads at a time. The D525 misses Speedstep and is therefore running at 1.8 GHz all the time (and using a lot more power than other Atoms without load).

In the processor package, the Atom D525 has an integrated DDR2/DDR3 memory controller and the GMA 3150 called graphics card.

The performance of the D525 can be on a level of slow clocked single core CPUs like the Intel SU2700 or AMD K125 if both cores are used. In single threaded applications, the performance is clearly worse and only on the level of a 1.8 GHz Atom CPU.

Rockchip RK3188

The Rockchip RK3188 is a fast ARM SoC primarily designed for tablets. It integrates four ARM Cortex A9 cores with NEON extension and a clock speed of up to 1.8 GHz, a Mali-400 MP4 graphics card (up to 600 MHz, 24 GFLOPS) and a low-power (LP-)DDR2/DDR3 memory controller. Due to the high clock rates, the performance of the CPU and GPU is superior to other Cortex-A9 quad-cores such as the Nvidia Tegra 3 and Samsung Exynos 4412. These high frequencies are possible due to the 28nm process (TSMC). However, this results in high power consumption and is thus not suited for compact smartphones.

Marvell PXA986

The Marvell PXA986 is an ARM based dual-core SoC for smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It contains two Cortex-A9 CPU cores usually clocked around 1.2 GHz and a Vivante GC1000 graphics card. The integrated video processor is able to handle 720p30 content in H.263, H.264 BP and MPEG4 SP encoding. Furthermore, a GSM/EDGE/WCDMA/HSDPA radio is included in the chip.