Samsung Exynos 7904 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 678

Samsung Exynos 7904

The Samsung Exynos 7904 (also called Exynos 7 Series) is a upper mid-range system-on-a-chip (SoC) for smartphones and tablets. It was launched early 2019 and features two Cortex-A73 cores clocked at up to 1.8 GHz. Furthermore, there are six power efficient Cortex-A53 cores at up to 1.6 GHz, an ARM Mali-G71 MP2 GPU and a LPDDR4x memory controller. The integrated LTE modem supports LTE Cat.12 3CA 600 Mbps download speeds and Cat.13 2CA 150 Mbps upload. 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0 and FM Radio are also in the chip. Compared to the older and faster Exynos 7885, the 7904 offers a slower clocked A73 cores (1.8 versus 2.2 GHz).

It is manufactured in 14nm FinFET at Samsung and therefore a rather power efficient SoC.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 678

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 (SD678) is a mid-range ARM-based SoC largely found on Android tablets and smartphones. It features 8 Kryo 460 called cores (64-Bit capable) that are divided in two clusters. A fast cluster of two cores with up to 2.2 GHz and  based on the ARM Cortex-A76 design. And a power saving efficiency cluster with up to 1.7 GHz and based on much smaller ARM Cortex-A55 cores. Both clusters can also used together. Compared to the old Snapdragon 675, the clock speed of the cores was increased by 200 MHz for the A76 and 100 MHz for the A55 cores.

In addition to the 8 CPU cores, the SoC integrates a lower mid range Adreno 612 GPU, a X12 LTE Modem with up to 600 Mbps download (Cat 12) and 150 Mbps upload (Cat 13), a 802.11ac (Wifi 5) Wave 2 WLAN modem (up to 867 Mbps), a Bluetooth 5.0 radio, satellite positioning (GPS, QZSS, GLONASS, SBAS, Beidou and Galileo) and a video engine (up to 4k30 encoding and support for H.265, H.264, VP8 and VP9).

Performance

Compared to the old Snapdragon 675, the 678 is only slightly faster in our benchmarks. Thanks to the two fast Cortex-A76 based cores, the SD678 is able to even best the old high end Snapdragon 835 SoC in some benchmarks.

The Snapdragon 678 is produced in the same 11nm LPP (Low Power Plus) process at Samsung as the 675 which is a combination of 14nm and 10nm. Compared to 14nm LPP, the 11nm LPP process should be able to increase performance by 15% and decrease the chip size by 10% according to Samsung.