Samsung Exynos 7884B vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 (MSM8917) vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 (MSM8937)

Samsung Exynos 7884B

The Samsung Exynos 7884B (also called Exynos 7 Series) is a upper mid-range system-on-a-chip (SoC) for smartphones and tablets. It integrates two big ARM Cortex-A73 cores clocked at up to 1.56 GHz. Furthermore, there are six power efficient Cortex-A53 cores at up to 1.35 GHz, an ARM Mali-G71 MP2 GPU and a LPDDR4x memory controller. Compared to the faster Exynos 7885, the CPU cores of the 7884B are clocked clearly lower. Furthermore, the integrated LTE modem is also slower (150 / 50 Mbit download / upload). 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0 and FM Radio are also in the chip. It is manufactured in 14nm FinFET at Samsung and therefore a rather power efficient SoC.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 (MSM8917)

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 (8917) is an ARM-based entry level SoC for tablets and smartphones (mostly Android based). It was announced in February 2016 and integrates four 64-Bit Cortex-A53 CPU cores (quad-core) that clock with up to 1.4 GHz. Furthermore, there is a Adreno 308 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (max. 667 MHz) 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 308 ist the integrated graphics card that supports OpenGL ES 3.0.

The integrated wireless radios support WiFi 802.11ac Wave 2, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS/GLONASS/Baidou, 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 lower range, and therefore it is also suited for smaller smartphones. It is manufactured in 28 nm LP at TSMC.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 (MSM8937)

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 (SD430) is a lower mainstream SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. Contrary to the Snapdragon 630, it is still manufactured in a 28-nm process and also consists of an octa-core CPU part with ARM Cortex-A53 cores. However, they are only clocked at up to 1.4 GHz. The integrated X6 LTE modem supports Cat. 4 with maximum transfer rates of 150 Mbps (downstream) and 75 Mbps (upstream). The SoC also includes an Adreno 505 GPU with support for Vulkan and OpenGL ES 3.1. WiFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.1 are supported as well. The memory controller supports LPDDR3 clocked at 800 MHz (so probably dual-channel DDRL-1600).