Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 vs HiSilicon Kirin 659 vs Samsung Exynos 7904

Qualcomm Snapdragon 450

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 (SD450) is a lower mainstream SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. It features eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores at up to 1.8 GHz and is already manufactured in the power efficient 14nm process. The integrated X9 LTE modem supports Cat. 7 with maximum transfer rates of 300 Mbps (downstream) and 150 Mbps (upstream). The SoC also includes an Adreno 506 GPU with support for Vulkan and OpenGL ES 3.1. WiFi 802.11ac (1x1, max 364 Mbps) and Bluetooth 4.1 are supported as well. The memory controller supports LPDDR3 (single channel) and the integrated video engine supports H.264 (encode and decode) and HEVC (only decode) in 1080p.

HiSilicon Kirin 659

The HiSilicon Kirin 659 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC for mid-range smartphones and tablets. It was announced mid 2017 and features eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores. Four cores can be clocked with up to 1.7 GHz (power saving cores) and four with up to 2.36 GHz (performance cores). The difference to the older Kirin 650 and Kirin 655 SoCs is the higher clock speed of the performance cores (2.35 versus 2.1 and 2.0 GHz). The slightly older Kirin 658 is very similar. The 659 is in our benchmarks around 4% faster than the 658 and offers a better LTE radio (Cat. 13).

Furthermore, a ARM Mali-T830 MP2 graphics card (at >=900 MHz), a 64-Bit LPDDR3 memory controller and a dual-sim capable LTE Cat. 6 (max. 300 MBit/s and GSM, WCDMA, UMTS, HSPA+) radio are integrated in the SoC. The processor performance can be compared with the older Kirin 930 and therefore sufficient for daily usage as browsing and non demanding apps. High-end SoCs with Cortex-A57 or A72 cores however should be noticeably faster. The SoC is produced in a modern 16nm FinFET process and is therefore very power efficient.

Samsung Exynos 7904

The Samsung Exynos 7904 (also called Exynos 7 Series) is a upper mid-range system-on-a-chip (SoC) for smartphones and tablets. It was launched early 2019 and features two Cortex-A73 cores clocked at up to 1.8 GHz. Furthermore, there are six power efficient Cortex-A53 cores at up to 1.6 GHz, an ARM Mali-G71 MP2 GPU and a LPDDR4x memory controller. The integrated LTE modem supports LTE Cat.12 3CA 600 Mbps download speeds and Cat.13 2CA 150 Mbps upload. 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0 and FM Radio are also in the chip. Compared to the older and faster Exynos 7885, the 7904 offers a slower clocked A73 cores (1.8 versus 2.2 GHz).

It is manufactured in 14nm FinFET at Samsung and therefore a rather power efficient SoC.