Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 vs Apple A6x vs UNISOC Tiger T310

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960

The Qualcomm MSM8960 (Snapdragon S4 series) is a ARM based high-end smartphone SoC in 2012. It contains two Krait (ARMv7) CPU cores at 1.5 - 1.7 GHz, a Adreno 225 GPU (400 MHz), a LPDDR2 memory controller (up to 500 MHz) and radio elements including LTE. The chip is produced in 28nm LP (low power process) at TSMC.

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

Apple A6x

The Apple A6x is a dual-core-SoC (System on a Chip) with ARM compatible CPU cores (ARMv7s instruction set). Both can be clocked at up to 1400 MHz depending on the load. It is used in the iPad 4 and compared to the A6 in the iPhone 5, the A6x offers a faster GPU (PowerVR SGX544MP4).

The CPU-Performance of the A6x is similar to the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro MSM8960T, while the GPU is about as fast as the Adreno 320.

UNISOC Tiger T310

The Unisoc Tiger T310 is a SoC for smartphones and tablets of the entry level. It was first announced in mid 2019 and integrates four CPU cores (quad core). One big Cortex-A75 core clocked at up to 2 GHz and three small A55 cores with up to 1.8 GHz.

Furthermore, the chip integrates an LTE modem (Cat 7, TDD-LTE, FDD-LTE, TDSCDMA, WCDMA, CDMA, GSM), Bluetooth 5.0 and WiFi b/g/n/ac. The integrated ISP supports up to two cameras (16 MPixel and 8 Mpixel, maximum 30 fps video capture) and the GNSS can use all current standards (GPS, Glonass, Beidou, Galileo).

The memory controller is able to drive LPDDR3 at 933 MHz and faster LPDDR4x at 1333 MHz.

The PowerVR GE8300 iGPU is from Imagination and clocked at up to 800 MHz.

The chip is produced in 12nm at TSMC and should offer a rather good power efficiency (for 2019).