MediaTek gets serious about smartphone gaming, launches 12 nm Helio G70 and G80 chipsets

In Summer of 2019, MediaTek announced the Helio G90 chipset aimed at affordable gaming smartphones. One of the first smartphone to carry the Helio G90 or G90T was the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro that only recently became available. Now, MediaTek is ready to launch the lesser Helio G70 and G80 chipsets designed for more affordable gaming smartphones.

Unlike the octa-core G90 which utilizes 2x 2.05 GHz Cortex-A76 and 6x 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 cores, the octa-core G70 and G80 will each make use of 2x Cortex-A75 and 6x Cortex-A55 cores at slower clock rates. The GPU will also be downgraded from the Mali G76 MC4 on the G90 to the Mali G52 MC2 and with slower LPDDR4x RAM as well. The end result will likely be a better fit for gaming smartphones with lower 1080p resolutions instead of any QHD or 4K UHD models.

The same features that are present on the Helio G90 will still be present on the G70 and G80 including HyperEngine for rapid automatic switching between Wi-Fi and LTE and improved resource management between the CPU, GPU, and RAM. The feature is designed optimize gameplay and prevent interruptions.

Though the new Helio G series sounds promising on paper, most major OEMs have yet to use them on many smartphones. The Helio G90, for example, powers the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro but it has yet to appear on any other well-known device at least in the United States. Hopefully MediaTek will be able to convince more OEMs to use Helio chipsets this time around instead of the usual Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs.