NVIDIA Tegra X1 Maxwell GPU vs Qualcomm Adreno 690 vs Qualcomm Adreno 618

NVIDIA Tegra X1 Maxwell GPU

The NVIDIA Tegra X1 Maxwell GPU is an integrated graphics card in the NVIDIA Tegra X1 SoC for (mostly Android based) tablets. It is the successor of the Tegra K1 GPU and based on the Maxwell architecture. It offers the same features as the laptop and desktop Maxwell based products like OpenGL 4.5, CUDA 6.0, OpenGL ES 3.1 and DirectX 11.2. The GPU offers 256 shader cores (2 SMMs) and clocks at up to 1000 MHz. The memory interface offers a maximum bandwidth of 25.6 GB/s (2x 32 Bit LPDDR4-3200).

First benchmarks of the Tegra X1 graphics card using GLBench show twice as high scores as the PowerVR GXA6850 in the Apple A8X. Therefore, the X1 should be the fastest GPU for Android based devices that should not struggle with high end Android games in high resolutions.

The improved video part of the SoC is able to en- and decode 4K videos in H.265 according to Nvidia (decoding at 60fps, encoding at 30fps). Thanks to HDMI 2.0 support, the 4K60 material can be transmitted to external displays (2 displays in parallel at max). The integrated dual ISP is able to drive up to 6 cameras (max. 100 MP, 4096 focus points) at once.

The power consumption of the whole SoC should be rather big compared to other ARM based SoCs. Therefore, Tegra X1 based smartphones are unlikely. As the Tegra K1, the X1 will be most likely seen in tablets with good cooling solutions. Similar to the Apple A8X, the Tegra X1 is manufactured in 20nm.

Qualcomm Adreno 690

The Qualcomm Adreno 690 is an integrated graphics card in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoC for Windows laptops. According to Qualcomm, the 690 is up to 60% faster than the previous generation. In our tests with the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s, the Adreno 690 was only on par with a low en Intel UHD Graphics iGPU and not well suited for 3D games.

The chip is manufactured in 5nm at Samsung (5LPE) and suited for fanless laptops.

Qualcomm Adreno 618

The Qualcomm Adreno 618 is a mobile graphics card for upper mid-range smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It is included in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 and 730G SoCs and based on the Adreno 600 architecture (like the Adreno 630, which should be fully compatible in software).

In our benchmarks, the Adreno 618 in the Snapdragon 730 was 14 to 30% faster than the Adreno 616 in the Snapdragon 710. The performance in the 730G should be additional 15% faster, due to higher clock rates.

The GPU supports modern standards like Vulkan 1.0 (according to Wikipedia), OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 11 (FL 11_1).