Mediatek MT8176 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 vs Mediatek MT8173C

Mediatek MT8176

The Mediatek MT8176 is an upper mainstream ARM SoC (System on a chip) that was introduced in October 2016 and is primarily used for Android based tablets. It has two fast Cortex-A72 CPU cores running at up to 2.1 GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores for power-saving in a big.LITTLE configuration. The graphics unit is based on the IMG Series 6XT (Rogue) and has the designation PowerVR GX6250 clocked at 600 MHz. Among others, the GPU includes a video decoder with 4K and H.265 support (not verified, but was already the case for the older MT8173).

Processor

The biggest highlight of the SoC are the new Cortex-A72 cores, which can be seen as the successors to the Cortex-A57 design. ARM promises much more performance in combination with reduced power consumption, which results in an excellent per-thread performance with the very high maximum clock of 2.4 GHz. The architecture is based on ARMv8-ISA and therefore supports 64-bit.

The four slower, but therefore very frugal Cortex-A53 cores (clocks unknown, probably around 1.4 GHz) are supposed to reduce the power consumption and are always active with light workloads. The big.LITTLE configuration also allows the simultaneous use of all six cores (or any combination of cores from both clusters), so the MT8173 can be called a real hexa-core.

Graphics

The graphics unit is based on Series 6XT (Rogue) from IMG and has the designation PowerVR GX6250. The 2-cluster chip has a unified-shader architecture with a total of 64 FP32 ALUs as well as 4 TMUs. Compared to the MT8173, the clocks were reduced from 700 to 600 MHz, so the gaming performance is a bit lower. High-resolution screens and complex Android games should be powered without bigger problems.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 429

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 is an ARM-based entry level SoC for tablets and smartphones (mostly Android based). It was announced in mid 2018 and integrates four 64-Bit Cortex-A53 CPU cores (quad-core) that clock with up to 2 GHz. Furthermore, there is a Adreno 504 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (max. 933 MHz) and wireless radios for WiFi and 4G/LTE included in the chip.

The Cortex-A53 is the successor of the entry level Cortex-A7 CPU cores. The A53 is now capable of 64 Bit (ARMv8-ISA) and addressing more than 4 GB RAM. According to ARM the performance per MHz is a lot better and even surpasses a Cortex-A9 core.

The integrated Adreno 504 ist the integrated graphics card that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 / 3.2 and Vulkan 1.0. According to Qualcomm, the GPU is 50% faster than the previous Adreno 308 in the Snapdragon 425.

The integrated wireless radios support WiFi 802.11ac Wave 2, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS/GLONASS/Baidou, 2G, 3G and 4G (LTE Cat.4 / Cat.5 - 150 Mbits download, 75 Mbits upload) standards. Futhermore, the SoC is able to decode 1080p videos in H.265 (encode only in H.264) and cameras with up to 13 MP.

The power consumption of the chip is ranging in the lower range, and therefore it is also suited for smaller smartphones. It is manufactured in the modern 12nm process.

Mediatek MT8173C

The Mediatek MT8173C is an upper mainstream ARM SoC (System on a chip) that was introduced in March 2015 and is primarily used for Android based tablets and Chromebooks. It is manufactured in a 28 nm process and has a total of four CPU cores with two Cortex-A72 and two Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. The graphics unit is based on the IMG Series 6XT (Rogue) and has the designation PowerVR GX6250. Among others, the GPU includes a video decoder with 4K and H.265 support.

Processor

The biggest highlight of the SoC are the new Cortex-A72 cores, which can be seen as the successors to the Cortex-A57 design. ARM promises much more performance in combination with reduced power consumption, which results in an excellent per-thread performance with the very high maximum clock of 2.4 GHz. The architecture is based on ARMv8-ISA and therefore supports 64-bit.

The two slower, but therefore very frugal Cortex-A53 cores (clocks unknown, probably around 1.5 GHz) are supposed to reduce the power consumption and are always active with light workloads. The big.LITTLE configuration also allows the simultaneous use of all four cores (or any combination of cores from both clusters), so the MT8173C can be called a real quad-core.

Graphics

The graphics unit is based on Series 6XT (Rogue) from IMG and has the designation PowerVR GX6250. The 2-cluster chip has a unified-shader architecture with a total of 64 FP32 ALUs as well as 4 TMUs. Thanks to the comparatively high maximum clock of 700 MHz, the performance is roughly on par with the PowerVR G6430 in the iPhone 5s. High-resolution screens and complex Android games from 2015 are usually no problem for the GPU.

Features

Besides CPU and GPU, the chip is also equipped with an LPDDR3 memory controller (2x 32-bit, probably up to 933 MHz, 14.9 GB/s), but no wireless modem. The maximum display resolution is 2560 x 1600 pixels. Another highlight is the integrated video engine, which even supports 4K material and the modern H.265 codec.

Power Consumption

The MT8173 is manufactured in an 28 nm process and should have a average up to high power consumption. It can still be used in tablets and laptops without limitations.