Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 MSM8260 vs Apple A6 vs Rockchip RK3168

Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 MSM8260

The Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 MSM8260 is an entry level SoC for smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It contains two Scorpion cores (enhanced ARM Cortex-A8) clocked at up to 1.5 GHz, a Adreno 220 graphics card and radio elements. Compared to the similar MSM8660, the 8260 does not include support for CDMA2000.

The similar named MSM8260A already contains the faster Krait cores and the slightly faster Adreno 225 graphics card.

Apple A6

The Apple A6 is a dual-core SoC found in the iPhone 5 with ARM compatible CPU cores. The A6 was developed by Apple and supports the extended ARMv7s instruction set. The clock rate of the CPU is between 800 to 1200 MHz depending on the CPU load. The integrated GPU is a PowerVR SGX543MP3 at 266 MHz.

Rockchip RK3168

The Rockchip RK3168 is a low-end ARM SoC designed primarily for smartphones. It integrates two Cortex-A9 CPU cores with NEON extension, a PowerVR SGX 540 graphics card (400 MHz) and a memory controller for low-power (LP-) DDR2/DDR3. The performance should be comparable to other similarly clocked Cortex-A9 SoCs such as the Samsung Exynos 4210. Thanks to its 28nm manufacturing, the RK3168 is relatively power efficient and should enable longer battery life.