MediaTek MT8163 V/B 1.3 GHz vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 MSM8952

MediaTek MT8163 V/B 1.3 GHz

The MediaTek MT8163 V/B 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-T720 MP2 graphics card clocked at 520 MHz, a DDR3x32 1600Mbps memory controller, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 b/g/n, GPS and FM are integrated in the SoC.

The similar named MediaTek MT8163 V/A is the faster version, with a CPU clock o up to 1.5 GHz and GPU of up to 600 MHz.

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

Qualcomm Snapdragon 435

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 (SD435) 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 X9 LTE modem supports Cat. 4 with maximum transfer rates of 300 Mbps (downstream) and 100 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). The main difference to the Snapdragon 430 is the faster LTE modem.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 MSM8952

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 MSM8952 is a mid-range ARMv8-based SoC largely for Android tablets and smartphones announced in September 2015. In addition to 8 Cortex-A53 CPU cores at up to 1.5 / 1.2 (performance and power saving cluster) GHz, the SoC integrates an Adreno 405 GPU with a LPDDR3-1866 memory controller and supports Wi-Fi (802.11ac), Bluetooth 4.0, UMTS, and LTE. Compared to the older Snapdragon 615, the clock speeds are a bit lower (hits 1.7 GHz max).

CPU

The Cortex-A53 is the successor to the very popular Cortex-A7 design. In addition to the new 64-bit capable ARMv8 ISA, the cores offer a variety of other improvements such as better branch prediction. This leads to a significantly higher performance per clock, which is even above the older Cortex-A9.

The eight cores of the Snapdragon 617 are divided into two quad-core clusters, each optimized for a different operating point. While one cluster can clock up to 1.5 GHz to handle more demanding applications, the other cluster is limited to a maximum of 1.2 GHz for energy-saving purposes. All eight cores can be active at the same time, although most applications aren't parallelized to support 8 cores efficiently.

Overall, the Snapdragon 617 offers a performance similar to that of the older Snapdragon 600 (Krait architecture).

GPU

Another new feature is the integrated graphics unit named Adreno 405 (most likely around 550 MHz). The Adreno 400 series has been substantially redesigned and supports DirectX 11.2 (FL 11_1) including hardware tessellation, OpenGL ES 3.1, and OpenCL 1.2. Furthermore, the performance has been significantly improved, which is now similar to the Adreno 320 and PowerVR G6200.

Features

The Snapdragon 617 offers numerous wireless technologies such as Bluetooth 4.0 and WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac as well as a Multi-SIM cellular modem supporting LTE cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbps), WCDMA, CDMA, EV-DO, TD-SCDMA and GSM/EDGE.

The SoC can encode and decode 1080p videos using dedicated hardware and stream content to displays with up to 2560 x 2048 pixels. A large number of video codecs including H.265 (playback only) will be supported. The camera ISP can handle sensors with up to 21 MP.

Power Consumption

The Snapdragon 617 is manufactured by TSMC in a 28 nm LP process. According to the specifications, we expect a medium or medium-high power consumption for use in medium-sized or larger smartphones and tablets.