Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8230 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064A vs Rockchip RK3168

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8230

The Qualcomm MSM8230 (Snapdragon S4 Plus series) is a ARM based high-end smartphone SoC in 2012. It contains two Krait (ARMv7) CPU cores at up to 1.2 GHz, a Adreno 305 GPU, a single channel LPDDR2 memory controller and radio elements.  The chip is produced in 28nm LP (low power process) at TSMC. Compared to the MSM8930, the 8230 lacks LTE.

The Krait cores offer a slightly better performance as the standard Cortex-A9 cores and are compatible to the NEON SIMD extensions.

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064A

The Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064A is a high-end SoC for Android smartphones and tablets, which was introduced in 2012. The chip integrates 4 CPU cores, which are based on the ARMv7-compatible, but by Qualcomm designed Krait architecture. This provides a much higher per-MHz performance than Cortex-A9 chips such as Nvidia's Tegra 3 or the Exynos 4412 from Samsung, but does not quite reach the performance of the Cortex-A15 (for example in the Tegra 4). The memory is accessed via 2 x 32 bit LPDDR2 at up to 533 MHz, which offers a bandwidth of 8.5 GB/s.

Thanks to a dedicated decoder, the SoC can accelerate 1080p video playback up to a frame rate of 30 fps. 3D photos are possible up to a resolution of 20 megapixels. In addition, the chip also integrates a wireless module with Bluetooth 4.0 and WLAN 802.11ac/a/b/g/n. Produced by TSMC in 28 nm (LP), the power consumption should be around 4 watts (estimated, depending on the clock speed).

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.