Exynos & Snapdragon Performance

For this review, thanks to the assistance from fellow editor Shawn, I've managed to compile benchmarks for both the Snapdragon 805 model and the Exynos 5433 model. Personally I've been using the Exynos variant, so my impressions of the phone are based on that handset, only it appears equally though both handsets are quite evenly matched.

There are a big number of Galaxy Note 4 models on the market place, larger than the number of SoCs Samsung has used, so the model numbers seen in the benchmarks that follow may not correspond to what you'll see in your state. However, the vast bulk of the hardware between the Snapdragon variants and the Exynos variants is the aforementioned, and so you should look near identical performance.

The Exynos model we used is the SM-N910U, which is the model on sale in Asia. For the Snapdragon variant, Shawn benchmarked the SM-N910T, the T-Mobile model in the United States. These devices tin can easily exist compared to the Galaxy Notation 3 models: the SM-N900 for Exynos, and SM-N9005 for Snapdragon; and the Galaxy S5: G900H for Exynos and G900F for Snapdragon.

Across our CPU-heavy benchmarks, we become the first glimpse of how powerful both the Snapdragon 805 and Exynos 5433 are. Starting with the Snapdragon 805, we're seeing an average operation increase of 13% over the 2.5 GHz quad-cadre Snapdragon 801, which is slightly college than the corresponding jump in clock speed between the chips. This corresponds well from the data available on the new Krait 450 CPU cores in the Snapdragon 805, which have been upgraded slightly from an compages standpoint.

What gets actually interesting is the Exynos 5433. Samsung absolutely aren't backing downwardly when it comes to their abode-grown silicon, boasting comparable CPU operation to Qualcomm's tiptop-end chip. Admittedly this is achieved over eight cores working in tandem, but it gives yous an thought of how powerful ARM's Cortex-A57 cores are compared to Qualcomm'due south high-cease offering. At 1.ix GHz and paired with some Cortex-A53s, the Exynos 5433 model is, on average, 7% faster than the 2.7 GHz Snapdragon 805 in CPU-heavy tasks.

Compared to the last Exynos model I benchmarked, the Exynos 5 Octa 5422 constitute in the Galaxy S5 G900H, nosotros tin can go a most like-for-like look at what performance improvements nosotros're getting from ARM's new architecture. The Exynos 5422 has 4 Cortex-A15 CPU cores clocked at 1.9 GHz paired with four Cortex-A7s clocked at 1.iii GHz in a big.Picayune environment. These clock speeds are identical to the Exynos 5433, but with new architecture nosotros can await meliorate performance, even while running in 32-bit way.

On average, the Exynos 5433 is xviii% faster than the Exynos 5422 in CPU-loaded tasks. ARM expects a 20-30% functioning comeback going from A15 to A57 CPU cores in 32-bit mode, so I'm pretty happy with what the results show. Keep in heed that these benchmarks will as well be utilizing the A53 cores in the Exynos 5433, which might non come across as big a performance gain over the A7s (and the results hint in this direction).

Graphics has, over the past few generations, been a weak bespeak for Samsung'due south Exynos chips. I'm glad to say that this is no longer the case, with the Exynos 5433 bringing a significantly improved GPU to the table that holds its own with the Snapdragon 805, which itself has improved over past chips. The Snapdragon model holds just a 5% lead over the Exynos model on boilerplate, which is a massive comeback over the 67% lead the Snapdragon 801 had over the Exynos 5422.

In this respect, I can safely conclude that the GPUs in each Note 4 are on par. This is a significant win for Samsung'due south microprocessor division, and removes one of the principal downsides to purchasing the Exynos variant of a Milky way product.

While I'm on the topic of the Exynos 5433, its Mali-T760 GPU was a whopping 58% faster than the Mali-T628 in the Exynos 5422 in my testing. This indicates that, as I expected, Samsung is using the Republic of mali-T760MP8 in the Exynos 5433, which is certainly a performance beast. The Republic of mali-T628 in its configuration in the Galaxy S5 was really only suitable for flagship graphics on a 720p brandish, whereas the Mali-T760 is a true Quad Hd GPU.

Gains aren't every bit desperate in the Snapdragon 805 model, but Qualcomm didn't need to accelerate as rapidly in this area, as they already had a strong graphics division. On average the Adreno 420 GPU in the Snapdragon 805 is 39% faster than the Adreno 330 in the Snapdragon 801: certainly naught to sneeze at.

These two new GPUs do have to render to 1440p displays that feature 77% more pixels than previous-gen 1080p panels, and in this respect they're both well suited. Y'all won't become quite as high frame rates in intense 3D applications every bit you would from a Snapdragon 801 rendering to a 1080p display, but these more than powerful fries are still very capable of running flagship titles from the Play Store.

The Galaxy Note 4 slots in behind the LG G3 to take second spot in NAND operation. It's good to encounter Samsung especially addressing random read/write operation in the hardware upgrade coming from the Galaxy S5, which was a weak spot in past handsets.

Ane thing that should exist noted is that Samsung has decided to drop the microUSB 3.0 port in favour of standard microUSB 2.0. This means that read/write speeds drop from 100/60 MB/south to 35/35 across USB, which slows down transfers. I imagine the regression in this area is for aesthetic reasons: microUSB iii.0 is a large and potentially awkward port (if y'all're trying to use a microUSB two.0 cable), and so it looks like Samsung may be waiting for the Blazon-C connector to become more widespread earlier switching back to loftier-speed USB.

Just on storage, the Galaxy Note 4 comes with 32 GB of internal NAND that tin can exist expanded through the microSD carte du jour slot plant beneath the rear cover. Can't mutter with this setup, though I wouldn't say no to more than internal storage.

I did notice throughout my benchmarking runs that the Galaxy Annotation 4 throttles its SoC to a pretty significant level after around 5 minutes of heavy CPU/GPU load. Subsequently the end of a 30 minute run the Notation 4 had lost just nether l% of its peak performance, as y'all tin can come across in the graph in a higher place. Note that these results are for the Exynos model; I'll have to examine the Snapdragon model in more detail afterward, although I suspect it throttles to a similar extent.

Likewise note that boilerplate peak performance is what nosotros have listed in our benchmarks. That is, the benchmarks illustrate the performance you lot can expect when the SoC isn't being throttled.