Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 vs Mediatek Helio P23 MT6763V vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 439

Qualcomm Snapdragon 429

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 is an ARM-based entry level SoC for tablets and smartphones (mostly Android based). It was announced in mid 2018 and integrates four 64-Bit Cortex-A53 CPU cores (quad-core) that clock with up to 2 GHz. Furthermore, there is a Adreno 504 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (max. 933 MHz) and wireless radios for WiFi and 4G/LTE included in the chip.

The Cortex-A53 is the successor of the entry level Cortex-A7 CPU cores. The A53 is now capable of 64 Bit (ARMv8-ISA) and addressing more than 4 GB RAM. According to ARM the performance per MHz is a lot better and even surpasses a Cortex-A9 core.

The integrated Adreno 504 ist the integrated graphics card that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 / 3.2 and Vulkan 1.0. According to Qualcomm, the GPU is 50% faster than the previous Adreno 308 in the Snapdragon 425.

The integrated wireless radios support WiFi 802.11ac Wave 2, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS/GLONASS/Baidou, 2G, 3G and 4G (LTE Cat.4 / Cat.5 - 150 Mbits download, 75 Mbits upload) standards. Futhermore, the SoC is able to decode 1080p videos in H.265 (encode only in H.264) and cameras with up to 13 MP.

The power consumption of the chip is ranging in the lower range, and therefore it is also suited for smaller smartphones. It is manufactured in the modern 12nm process.

Mediatek Helio P23 MT6763V

The Mediatek Helio P23 MT6763V is a mainstream ARM SoC for smartphones (mainly Android based) that was introduced in 2017. It is manufactured in a 16 nm FinFET+ process and is equipped with 8 ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores. The cores are divided in two clusters, a performance cluster clocked at up to 2 GHz (versus 2.3 GHz in the official specs for the similar P23 MT6763T) and a power efficiency cluster clocked at up to 1.65 GHz (unverified). The chip also includes an LTE modem (Cat. 7 DL / Cat. 13 UL with Dual-SIM support) and a 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi modem. The integrated ARM Mali-G71 MP2  GPU is clocked at up to 770 MHz and has two cluster (from 32). The integrated memory controller supports DDR4x (Dual-Channel?) at 1500 MHz and LPDDR3 (Single Channel only) at 933 MHz. The video engine supports H.264 de- and encoding but only decoding (playback) of H.265/HEVC.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 439

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 (SD439) is a lower mainstream SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. Compared to the older Snapdragon 435, the 439 is now manufactured in the current 12nm FinFET process and offers higher clock speeds of 2 GHz of the eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores (compared to 1.4 GHz). Wifi (now ac Wave 2 / Wifi 5) and Bluetooth (v5) were also updated, however the GPU still is the rather slow Adreno 505 and the LTE modem was even downgraded to a X6 with only Cat. 4/5 (max. 150 Mbps download, 75 Mbps upload).

Thanks to the higher maximum clock speed, the performance of the Snapdragon 439 mobile platform can reach the old Snapdragon 625 (also 2 GHz with 8x Cortex-A53). However, there is still a big gap to the SoCs with bigger performance cores.