Good news for Pixel 10 owners, GPU performance issues could be fixed by simple driver update

Google unveiled the Pixel 10 series on August 20 and even though there were only minor design tweaks, more significant improvements were made on the inside. The SoC, Tensor G5, is the company’s first 3 nm chip so theoretically, it should bring significant performance improvements. However, the real-world results told a different story with lackluster output, especially on the GPU end. Fortunately, it seems like there could be a simple fix, if Google acts on it.

The Tensor G5 uses the PowerVR DXT-48-1536 GPU from Imagination Technologies, which on paper, is a relatively powerful one that supports Vulkan 1.3, a theoretical 1.5 TFLOPS FP32 performance, and boost clock speed of 1,100 MHz. However, real-world tests and synthetic benchmarks show performance numbers that do not coincide with the potential of the SoC. Furthermore, users noted that the GPU stays at idle frequency of 396 MHz even under heavy load (via Android Police).

It has been discovered that the Pixel 10 phones are running an outdated driver, v24.3 . These are likely to be the cause of the underwhelming GPU performance. Fortunately, Imagination Technologies has already released a new driver, v25.1, that brings Vulkan 1.4 support, improved OpenCL features, and Android 16 compatibility. This should improve real-world performance and bring the Tensor G5 in the Pixel 10 phones up to its true potential.

Now, all that remains is for Google to release a driver update. Even though the latest GPU driver was released before the Pixel 10 series launch, the phones stuck with an older version. Therefore, it is unclear how much of a priority updating the drivers is for Google. That being said, it has already released a fix for the red, green and white lines showing up on some Pixel 10 phones, so the GPU performance fix could be next on the list.