Samsung Exynos 850 vs Mediatek MT6750

Samsung Exynos 850

The Samsung Exynos 850 is a System on a Chip (SoC) for entry level smartphones (Android based). It was announced in May 2020 and the first device with it is the Samsung Galaxy A21s. The chip integrates a processor with 8 small ARM Cortex-A55 cores that clock with up to 2 GHz (octa core).

The multi threaded performance is quite good thanks to 8 cores, the single threaded performance suffers a bit from the small A55 cores, although the clock rate of up to 2 GHz can help a bit.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a LTE modem (Cat.7 2CA up to 300 MBit/s download, Cat.13 2CA 150 MBit/s upload), a Wi-fi 5 modem (802.11ac), LPPDDR4x memory controller, eMMC 5.1 flash memory controller and a video engine for FHD 60fps encoding and decoding (H.265, H.264, VP9).

It is manufactured in the modern 8nm LPP process at Samsung and should offer a good power efficiency and therefore it is also suited for small smartphones.

Mediatek MT6750

The ARM-based Mediatek MT6750 SoC (System on a Chip) is a mid-range mobile processor announced in Q2 2016 for smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It integrates 8 ARM Cortex-A53 cores consisting of 4 high-performance cores clocked at up to 1.5 GHz plus 4 low-power cores clocked at up to 1 GHz each. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a Cat. 6 LTE radio and an ARM Mali-T860 MP2 GPU with 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.

The Cortex-A53 is the successor to the Cortex-A7 and introduces 64-Bit support (ARMv8-ISA). Its performance-per-Watt is significantly higher and is even slightly ahead of the old Cortex-A9. If utilizing all 8 of its cores, the Cortex-A53 can rival competing mobile processes in the high-end class range. However, no practical software has been specifically coded to use all 8 cores at such high performance levels.

The integrated GPU is the modern ARM Mali-T860 MP2 (two clusters) clocked at up to 520 MHz. It should be able to run all current Android games.

In addition to the CPU and GPU cores, the SoC also contains a memory controller and the aforementioned Cat.6 LTE modem (FDD/TDD, DC-HSPA+, TD-SCDMA, CDMA2000, EDGE) with both 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth. The integrated video engine is able to record and playback 1080p videos at up to 30 FPS in hardware. Cameras are supported at up to 16 MP.

The MT6750 is still manufactured in 28nm and so power efficiency is not on par with modern 14/16nm chips.