Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 vs Mediatek Helio G88

Qualcomm Snapdragon 678

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 (SD678) is a mid-range ARM-based SoC largely found on Android tablets and smartphones. It features 8 Kryo 460 called cores (64-Bit capable) that are divided in two clusters. A fast cluster of two cores with up to 2.2 GHz and  based on the ARM Cortex-A76 design. And a power saving efficiency cluster with up to 1.7 GHz and based on much smaller ARM Cortex-A55 cores. Both clusters can also used together. Compared to the old Snapdragon 675, the clock speed of the cores was increased by 200 MHz for the A76 and 100 MHz for the A55 cores.

In addition to the 8 CPU cores, the SoC integrates a lower mid range Adreno 612 GPU, a X12 LTE Modem with up to 600 Mbps download (Cat 12) and 150 Mbps upload (Cat 13), a 802.11ac (Wifi 5) Wave 2 WLAN modem (up to 867 Mbps), a Bluetooth 5.0 radio, satellite positioning (GPS, QZSS, GLONASS, SBAS, Beidou and Galileo) and a video engine (up to 4k30 encoding and support for H.265, H.264, VP8 and VP9).

Performance

Compared to the old Snapdragon 675, the 678 is only slightly faster in our benchmarks. Thanks to the two fast Cortex-A76 based cores, the SD678 is able to even best the old high end Snapdragon 835 SoC in some benchmarks.

The Snapdragon 678 is produced in the same 11nm LPP (Low Power Plus) process at Samsung as the 675 which is a combination of 14nm and 10nm. Compared to 14nm LPP, the 11nm LPP process should be able to increase performance by 15% and decrease the chip size by 10% according to Samsung.

Mediatek Helio G88

The Mediatek Helio G88 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 1.8 GHz for efficiency (unverified, maybe also 2 GHz). 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 1000 MHz (up from 950 MHz from the otherwise similar Helio G80). The SoC also integrates the HyperEngine that handles a dynamic management of CPU, GPU and memory. Compared to the older Helio G85, the G88 now supports 90 Hz displays and features version 2.0 of the HyperEngine.

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.