MediaTek MT8161 vs Rockchip RK3188 vs HiSilicon Kirin 620

MediaTek MT8161

The MediaTek MT8161 is an ARM based entry-level to mid-range SoC for (Android based) tablets. It offers four ARM Cortex-A53 processor cores (quad-core) that are clocked with up to 1.3 GHz. Furthermore, an ARM Mali-720 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (e.g., accessing 1 GB in the Lenovo Tab 2 A8-50), Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band 802.11 b/g/n are integrated in the SoC.

The performance is situated in the entry level of 2015 and often similar to the Kirin 910T (see benchmark below).

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.

HiSilicon Kirin 620

The HiSilicon Kirin 620 is an ARM-based octa core SoC for mid-range smartphones. It was announced at the end of 2014 and features eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores at 1.2 GHz (max.). Furthermore, the processor integrates a ARM Mali-450 MP4 graphics card, an LPDDR3 memory controller, an LTE Cat.4 modem, 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. The chip is manufactured in 28nm and relatively power efficient.