Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 vs Mediatek Helio G81 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 415 MSM8929

Qualcomm Snapdragon 630

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 (SDM630) is a mid-range octa-core SoC with eight ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores at up to 2.2 GHz, an Adreno 508 GPU, a LPDDR4-2666 memory controller (1333 MHz) and a X12 LTE (Cat 12/13, 300 Mbps down, 150 Mbps up) modem. Furthermore, the chip supports 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0. It is manufactured in 14nm FinFet. The processor performance should similar to the older Snapdragon 626 which offers similar clock speeds. Compared to the 626, the 630 however supports faster memory and offers faster LTE, Wifi and Bluetooth standards.

Mediatek Helio G81

The Mediatek Helio G81 is a mainstream ARM SoC for smartphones (mainly Android based) that was introduced in 2020. It is manufactured in a 12 nm FinFET process and integrates 8 CPU cores. Two fast ARM Cortex-A75 cores with up to 2 GHz for performance tasks and six small ARM Cortex-A55 with up to 1.7 GHz for efficiency. All eight cores can be used together thanks to Heterogeneous Multi-Processing support. The integrated GPU is a ARM Mali-G52 MC2 (MP2) with two clusters at up to 950 MHz. The SoC also integrates the HyperEngine that handles a dynamic management of CPU, GPU and memory.

Compared to the old Helio G80, the G81 offers support for 120Hz displays.

The SoC integrates furthermore a LTE radio with Cat-7 (download) / Cat-13 (upload) support, Wifi 5 (ac), Bluetooth 5.0, LPDDR4x 1800 MHz and eMMC 5.1 storage.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 415 MSM8929

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 415 (8929) is an ARM-based mid-range SoC for tablets and smartphones (mostly Android based). It was announced in February 2015 and integrates eight 64-Bit Cortex-A53 CPU cores (octa-core) that clock with up to 1.4 GHz. Furthermore, there is a Adreno 405 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (max. 667 MHz, 5.3 GB/s) 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 adressing 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 405 is clocked with about 500 MHz and supports DirectX 11.1 incl. hardware Tesselation, OpenGL ES 3.1 and OpenCL 1.2.

The integrated wireless radios support WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, 2G, 3G and 4G (LTE Cat.4) 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 mid range, and therefore it is also suited for smaller smartphones.