Benchmarks pop up for phones and processors long before they hit the market all the time, sometimes with questionable veracity. This can be for a number of reasons. Most often, the benchmark at hand is from a dubious source, or is not named all that clearly. In other cases, its numbers and nature may seem to run counter to what it is implied to be. The benchmark that recently leaked on Sina Weibo seems to be a case of the latter; a Geekbench run has surfaced claiming to be for a device sporting an MT6799 processor, which could and should, according to past nomenclature, be the Helio X30. The problem with this benchmark is that it scores quite low, and seems to have been run at a fairly low clock speed.
Given the performance of MediaTek’s previous Helio X series flagship chipsets, such a chip performing at only 1.59 gigahertz at the top of its game seems pretty ludicrous. Its Geekbench scores match this low clock speed, with the single-core number coming in at 1,504, while multi-core testing generates 4,666 points. These scores would put the reference device with the flagship chip in it, if that is what we’re looking at here, roughly on par with the Helio X20-packing LeEco Le X620, showing a negligible improvement that is by no means worthy of the next major chip in a flagship lineup. With a higher clock speed, of course, this chip would likely blow its predecessor out of the water.
According to details on the Helio X30 dropped by MediaTek back in September, soon after they initially announced it, the chip should top out at about 2.8 gigahertz for its stronger set of cores, while the lower-power cores will run at about 2.3 gigahertz, and the lowest cores on board will run at a flat 2 gigahertz. Additionally, the processor is supposed to be manufactured on a 10 nanometer process. All of these factors allegedly stand to make the chip just over 50% more power efficient than the Helio X20, and just over 40% more powerful on the performance front. This means that the benchmark we’re looking at here could very well be for a device sporting the new Helio X30 chip, but clocked lower.
