ARM Mali-G72 MP12 vs Qualcomm Adreno 330 vs ARM Mali-G71 MP20

ARM Mali-G72 MP12

The ARM Mali-G72 MP12 is an integrated high-end graphics card for ARM based SoCs (mostly Android based). It was introduced in October 2017 in the Huawei Mate 10 and uses 12 clusters (hence the MP12 name). In our benchmarks it performs between a Adreno 530 and 540 and is therefore suitable for demanding mobile games.

The G72 is based on the second generation of the Bifrost architecture and offers improvements in the machine learning efficiency and a bigger tile buffer for 16x anti-aliasing.

The GPU supports all modern graphics APIs like OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.0, OpenCL 2.0, DirectX 12 FL11_1 and Renderscript.

Qualcomm Adreno 330

The Qualcomm Adreno 330 is a GPU for smartphones and tablets that is integrated into Qualcomm SoCs. It was introduced in the middle of 2013 and was primarily used for Android devices. The graphics card uses a technology called FlexRender. It can switch "intelligently" switch between TBR (TBR Tile Based Renderer) and the classic direct rendering. It supports OpenGL ES 3.0 and is mostly used in Android based smartphones and tablets.

The graphics clock rate of the Adreno 330 differs from the used SoC where it is built in. It ranges from 450 MHz in the Snapdragon 800 MSM8974, over 550 MHz in the MSM8974AB up to 578 MHz in the Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AC. In addition, there are some architectural changes compared to the former Adreno 320 (e.g. more shader cores).

As a high-end GPU (in 2013) for Android based SoCs, the Adreno 330 is able to cope with even demanding games and high resolution displays. As you can see in our tests benchmarks below, the performance is similar to the PowerVR G6430 in the Apple A7 SoC.

We tested a Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 with a 450 MHz clocked Adreno 330 in a Acer Liquid S2 (see our review). The games run in 1920x1080 on this phablet and are therefore quite demanding.

Real Racing 3 was running quite good on some tracks in "high" settings (set with RR3 Graphics App) and stuttering on other tracks with many cars visible. In medium settings it ran fluently all the time. However battery consumption (25% in 3 races with a total runtime of 45 min) and heat development (max 42°C = 108°F) were quite high.

Fifa 14 and Angry Birds Go were also well playable although there was some slight stuttering visible in both games (may be caused by the game itself). Angry Birds Go also felt like running most of the times in lower fps regions.

The older but still demanding GTA 3 was no problem for the Liquid S2 as were less demanding games like Subway Surf or Temple Run 2. Especially the later two ran in high fps regions.

ARM Mali-G71 MP20

The ARM Mali-G71 MP20 is an integrated high-end graphics adapter for ARM SoCs, which was e.g. used in smartphone chip Samsung Exynos 9 8895. It features 20 clusters and is manufactured in 10nm FinFET (in the Exynos 8895). The performance is in the high-end class and therefore all current Android games should run fluently on the chip.