Mediatek MT8389 vs Mediatek MT6589 vs Mediatek MT6592

Mediatek MT8389

The Mediatek MT8389 is a low-cost ARM SoC (System on a Chip) used mainly used in tablets. It is manufactured in 28 nm and integrates a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor and a PowerVR SGX 544 GPU. The CPU cores are typically clocked at 1.2 - 1.5 GHz, while the GPU is clocked at 300 MHz. The official specifications of the MT8389 are identical to the MT8125 SoC.

Performance

Since the Cortex-A7 architecture is somewhat slower than a Krait or Cortex-A9 design at the same clock speed, the performance of the MT8389 is just below Nvidia's Tegra 3 or the Samsung Exynos 4412. The PowerVR SGX 544 is also just a simple low-cost solution not designed for ultra-high resolution displays or very demanding games.

Features

In addition to processor and GPU, the SoC also integrates a decoder for 1080p video, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, FM radio, GPS and 2G/3G radios (up to HSPA+). Cameras are supported up to a resolution of 13 MP.

Power consumption

Thanks to the energy-efficient A7 cores and 28 nm manufacturing, the power consumption is low enough to be a fit for tablets.

Mediatek MT6589

The MediaTek MT6589 (previously known as the TMK6588) is an SoC for budget Android tablets and smartphones. It is manufactured in 28 nm and offers a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor, a PowerVR SGX 544 GPU, 1080p30 video encoding and decoding, 802.11n WLAN, Bluetooth 4.0 and radios for Dual-SIM UMTS HSPA+, GPS and FM. The performance is similar to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 Series and adequate for everyday tasks like browsing.

Mediatek MT6592

The MediaTek MT6592 is a mid-range 28 nm SoC for Android smartphones and tablets. It was announced near the end of 2013 and is manufactured in 28 nm. It includes 8 Cortex-A7 processor cores that are typically clocked up to 1.7 - 2.0 GHz. Furthermore, the SoC integrates an ARM Mali-450 GPU at 700 MHz, WLAN, a video decoder for up to 4K content, a LPDDR3 memory controller at 666 MHz, and a 2G/3G (UMTS/HSPA+) radio.

Although the MT6592 offers eight relatively high clocked CPU cores compared to other SoCs, its performance in day-to-day usage is a bit lower, as the Cortex-A7 cores offer slower performance per clock and only a few apps are able to make use of all 8 cores simultaneously. Modern dual-core (e.g., Apple A7) or quad-core (e.g., Cortex A15 or Snapdragon 800) SoCs can be clearly faster in everyday scenarios.

The integrated ARM Mali-450 MP4 GPU offers 4 graphics clusters that are clocked at a high 700 MHz. However, the performance of the GPU is somewhat below that of a Tegra 4 or Adreno 320. Also like the Nvidia rival, the Mali-450 lacks support for OpenGL ES 3.0.