New Galaxy S6 benchmarks show Samsung beating its rivals — including Apple
New Galaxy S6 benchmarks show Samsung beating its rivals — including Apple
We’ve already covered the launch of the Galaxy S6 and the basics of the design, but how does the device actually perform in day-to-day use?Early test results from PCMag.com are in, courtesy of Sascha Segan, and the data points to a significant performance increase for Samsung’s latest platform.
Before we dive into the figures, a few caveats are in order. Samsung hasn’t shipped review units yet, so these tests are run on manufacturer hardware at a trade show. That means the devices also haven’t been examined with a fine-toothed comb to make certain that Samsung has stopped cheating on its benchmark results. Bearing in mind that these figures should be taken with a grain of salt, let’s look at the data:
Here are the single and multi-core results for Geekbench’s overall score. The Galaxy S6 is faster in single-core performance than any other CPU save Apple’s A8, and its multi-core performance leaves all competitors in the dust. Even Nvidia’s Shield tablet, which comes closest to matching the Samsung S6, is still just 66% as fast.
One thing I want to highlight from these results is the overall scaling factor of each platform — how much additional performance do we see from switching to multi-core, up from single-core?
Remember, in this case, Apple’s A8 is just a dual-core CPU, meaning it’s maximum theoretical scaling performance would be 2x. If we were to evaluate scaling as a measure of peak theoretical gain, Apple’s A8 is at 82.5% of theoretical performance, compared to 72.5% and 76% for the Dell Venue 7 8000 and the Nvidia Shield tablet.
One thing to remember about scaling in a mobile CPU is that it’s a passable stand-in for heat and power generation. The LG G3 is actually a great example of this — I have one, and it struggles with throttling under any kind of load. The anemic scaling we see here is a result of that problem, guaranteed.
The Galaxy S6’s scaling factor, in contrast, is much stronger. It blows past the LG G3, even beats out both tablets, and equals the iPhone 6’s if we normalize the comparison. The implication here is that the 14nm shift paid big dividends for Samsung — and by extension, for customers.
The Galaxy S6 isn’t just about CPU performance, however. GPU performance matters, too — so what do we see with offscreen comparisons in GFXBench?
Here, the Nvidia Shield tablet has an easy and expected win, but the Samsung Galaxy S6 pulls into a very respectable second place, narrowly beating out the iPhone 6 on both tests. Clearly graphics performance has some chops to it, making this a respectable win for ARM and the Mali-T760 architecture.
Early performance chops
Barring substantial shenanigans on Samsung’s part (something we can’t rule out given the company’s past behavior), the Galaxy S6 is going to be the smartphone to beat for 2015. We know Qualcomm is working on a leading-edge version of the Snapdragon 820 and its Kryo CPU, but ARM’s Cortex-A57/A53 combo on 14nm clearly shines. We may not know absolute power consumption figures yet, but the superior scaling we see in these tests suggest they’ll be positive.
One interesting question is whether Apple will finally jump to quad cores in the eventual A9. For years, the company has chosen to emphasize lower clock speeds and very high IPC relative to other ARM manufacturers. The LG G3 is an example of how this strategy can pay off — the G3 simply can’t dissipate enough heat to really tap its quad-core CPU, and it’s not the only phone to have this problem.
The Galaxy S6’s results suggest that new phones will have a much easier time using all cores for a longer period. That could finally prompt Apple to take an upgrade, and move its A-class processor division over to a quad-core configuration.
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