Samsung/AMD Radeon GPU for Smartphones is Reportedly Beating the Competition

[AleksandarK]

Samsung and AMD announced last year their strategic partnership to bring AMD RDNA GPUs to the Samsung mobile chips and use that as the only GPU going forward. And now, some performance numbers are going around about the new RDNA smartphone GPU that is compared to Qualcomm Adreno 650 GPU. Thanks to the South Korean technology forum "Clien", they have obtained some alleged performance results of new GPU in the GFXBench benchmark. The baseline in these tests is the Qualcomm Adreno 650 GPU, which scored 123 FPS in Manhattan 3.1 test, 53 FPS in Aztec Normal, and 20 FPS in Aztec High.

The welcome surprise here is the new RDNA GPU Samsung is pursuing. It has scored an amazing 181 FPS in Manhattan 3.1 test (up 47% from Adreno 650), 138 FPS in Aztec Normal (up almost 200% from Adreno 650), and 58 FPS in Aztec High which is 190% higher compared to Adreno 650. This performance results could be very true, as the Samsung and AMD collaboration should give first results in 2021 when the competition will be better, and they need to prepare for that. You always start designing a processor for next-generation workloads and performance if you want to be competitive by the time you release a product.


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[ZoneDymo]

cool for sure, but I want the next gen of desktop gpu's damn it!

 

[Vayra86]

Yay, we can finally play solitaire on a phone now

 

[dj-electric]

Yay, we can finally play solitaire on a phone now

I'm not entirely sure you are aware of the surprising quality of visual fidelity mobile phone GPUs can handle these days...

 

[ZoneDymo]

I'm not entirely sure you are aware of the surprising quality of visual fidelity mobile phone GPUs can handle these days...

^ Dead By Daylight was recently released on mobile, I was honestly very impressed by it.

 

[Fouquin]

Well since AMD is definitely not going to get the Adreno name back from Qualcomm, I can think of some alternatives like Neorad or Draneo.

Though Draneo may be confused for a highly toxic plumbing cleaner.

 

[Vayra86]

I'm not entirely sure you are aware of the surprising quality of visual fidelity mobile phone GPUs can handle these days...

I am, and it is rather unimpressive. 'Surprising' it is not. Its a GPU and it pushes pixels and mobile has a much lower TDP to work with. It can do some 3D with ultra low res texture, cool.

I mean... Dead by Daylight. A disturbed mess of pixels. Is this really impressive?
Its cool they're making progress... but its not hard to make big jumps from nothing.

For giggles, here is what a PSP in 2005 could do... at 60 FPS locked

 

[mtcn77]

I will applaud Eric Demers for all the good that he has done. He had the Adreno project going and Radeon back in 2012 when Raja Koduri fired him 8 years ago.
Let us congratulate the real hero for making the journey possible.

Give this guy his corporate title already!
Eric Demers fan for life!

 

[londiste]

Power usage? Amount of CUs/shaders? Frequency?
Mobile has a lot more factors than pure performance.

 

[renz496]

This will be limited to samsung phones only right?

 

[Ferrum Master]

Exynos designs were always inferior GPU wise vs adreno... and there was nothing to be done about it...

Well... this will settle things down for RoW devices. The mobile gamer market is also big, they know what they do...

 

[davideneco]

"181 FPS in Manhattan 3.1 test (up 47% from Adreno 650)"

87 > 181 = +47% ?

its like +108%

 

[Ferrum Master]

Yay, we can finally play solitaire on a phone now

You can play PS2 emulator on latest 3 best Snapdragons... yet not any Exynoss... the platform becomes viable just as Switch is to port any PC game directly to it...

 

[Fatalfury]

i dont think Qualcomm will let AMD or anybody else beat them...xD

Lets see

 

[GoldenX]

If this means ASTC support on desktop RDNA2 cards, then it is very welcome.

 

[zlobby]

This will be limited to samsung phones only right?

Initially, yes. Soon after, probably not so much.

 

[R0H1T]

i dont think Qualcomm will let AMD or anybody else beat them...xD

Lets see

Meaning what? Pretty sure AMD has them beat in CPU, GPU tech not to mention custom SoC, probably (ultra) low power chips as well if they do decide to get back into the (x86) tablet space at 5nm or lower nodes.

 

[zlobby]

Time will tell. And even if it's not faster or more energy efficient, this thew GPU, would it matter?

Samsung are already selling their inferior Exynos in their flagmans, and all non-geeky users couldn't care less.

Switching GPU looks more like a PR stunt at this stage. Samsung clearly demonstrate they couldn't care less about thier user base, once the product is bought.

 

[dj-electric]

@Vayra86
seems i was right. If you are showing me examples this terrible you do not have any idea of it. There are plenty of mobile games with visual fidelity akin to somewhere between PS3 and PS4.
Ill bring up some cases. Look at Asphalt 9, or CoD mobile. Flagship devices render them at 1080p and above while maintaining 60FPS or higher consistantly. visually speaking, mobile phone GPUs advanced a lot.

The examples you brought up look like mobile games 7+ years ago, when available GPUs were not even at 20% of their current compute power.

 

[R0H1T]

Samsung are already selling their inferior Exynos in their flagmans, and all non-geeky users couldn't care less.

You do realize they've being using vanilla ARM cores on Exynos line since eons? And no they are not selling the complete Exynos division, just shutting down custom Mongoose core development!

Switching GPU looks more like a PR stunt at this stage. Samsung clearly demonstrate they couldn't care less about their user base, once the product is bought.

Clearly you don't pay enough attention, Samsung is probably the best Android smartphone maker because of their regular OS & security updates! Of course with literally thousands of models they have made a mess of it, but anyone conflating this with their alleged "lack of support" seems to be living in cuckoo land

 

[Vya Domus]

Samsung may very well produce the best mobile GPUs available, after all they'll have access to IP no one else has.

You do realize they've being using vanilla ARM cores on Exynos line since eons?

The cores that they use in the high end SoCs are custom and indeed they seem inferior to the default ARM designs.

Power usage? Amount of CUs/shaders? Frequency?

Even if you'd know that I doubt it would have any meaning, they are not going to just plop a stock RDNA CU in there, pretty sure it's going to be something highly customized to the lowest level.

 

[R0H1T]

The cores that they use in the high end SoCs are custom and indeed they seem inferior to the default ARM designs.

You mean the latest M5 cores? Yes they're less efficient but inferior to what exactly, btw they lead in ST performance IIRC second only to Apple.

 

[Vya Domus]

You mean the latest M5 cores? Yes they're less efficient but inferior to what exactly, btw they lead in ST performance IIRC second only to Apple.

They lead in ST performance in what ? Geekbench ? Worlds worst benchmark proven by the fact the fact that the scores it generates do not coincide with reality.

Have a look at this : https://www.anandtech.com/show/1560...xynos-snapdragon-review-megalomania-devices/6

Exynos custom cores are considerably worse in pretty much everything, you'd just be ignoring reality if you thought otherwise. If they are so great why are they stopping production of new designs ?

 

[R0H1T]

So Geekbench is trash & SPEC2006 is great, is that why Intel switched to SPEC2017 just to showcase how great Icelake is? As for ST performance, how many tests in that review measure that? Scheduler issues have been plaguing Galaxy Exynos based phones for at least the last 2 gens, don't know if it was fixed this time or not ~

The Samsung Galaxy S10+ Snapdragon & Exynos Review: Almost Perfect, Yet So Flawed

www.anandtech.com

Improving The Exynos 9810 Galaxy S9: Part 2 - Catching Up With The Snapdragon

www.anandtech.com

Yes admittedly Snapdragon is superior across the board but there's a lot of issues which makes testing on phones, even same models, truly not an apples to apples comparison.

 

[Vya Domus]

So Geekbench is trash & SPEC2006 is great, is that why Intel switched to SPEC2017 just to showcase how great Icelake is? As for ST performance, how many tests in that review measure that? Scheduler issues have been plaguing Galaxy Exynos based phones for at least the last 2 gens, don't know if it was fixed this time or not ~

Exynos SoCs are just worse, have been for a couple of years, the last competitive one was the 8895, there is no going around the fact that since then it's been going downhill. It's not just CPU performance but also GPU and on top of that they are less efficient on worse nodes. The Snapdragon version tops almost all charts, SPEC or not SPEC.

Geekbench is undeniably trash, making people believe Apple makes sub 5W SoCs that rival desktop chips with ten times the power budget. That's how out of touch with reality that benchmark's scores are. No benchmark could possibly give a 100% accurate hierarchy but no other benchmark has generated results that are so bewildering like Geekbench did. You have proof right in front of you, all benchmarks paint the Snapdragon SoCs as being faster, all except Geekbench, isn't that bizarre ? I suspect Samsung simply optimized a couple of things for this one benchmark in particular since they knew everyone has a fetish for comparing Android with Apple.