The Snapdragon 730, one of the newest mid-range chipset offerings from Qualcomm, has been benchmarked using the popular measurement tool AnTuTu, and the result reveals that the processor can match the performance offered by flagship chipsets from Qualcomm and Huawei around two years ago.
The Samsung Galaxy A80, the newest mid-tier offering from Samsung Electronics that sports a rotating camera setup, sports the Snapdragon 730 chipset and a unit of the device was recently tested using the AnTuTu benchmark app. The benchmark result reveals that the Snapdragon 730 chipset achieved a score of 207,082 points.
In contrast, the ranking of best-performing Android smartphones on AnTuTu’s website shows that the variant of the Galaxy Note 8 with the Snapdragon 835 scored 204,138 points, and the score achieved by the Galaxy A80 almost matched the performance displayed by the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, which featured the Kirin 970 SoC and scored 207,777 points.
While the AnTuTu benchmark measures the performance of the handset based on multiple factors, the chipset incorporated into the device contributes most of the performance measured by the AnTuTu app. While benchmark results may not necessarily fully describe the performance and user experience offered by smartphones, it still shows how much raw performance the processors included with the devices can supply.
Several factors allowed the Snapdragon 730 to match the older flagship processors in terms of performance. The mid-range chipset features the newer ARM Cortex A76 CPU, while the Kirin 970 and the Snapdragon 835 SoCs both feature CPU cores based on the Cortex A73 CPU. The Cortex A76, which the British chip designer launched last year, offers a 35-percent improvement over the Cortex A75 CPU. In turn, the Cortex A75 performs up to 20-percent better compared to the Cortex A73. The substantial generational improvements in ARM’s CPU offerings becomes more evident when we consider that the Snapdragon 730 only features two high-performance cores.
Aside from improved CPU cores, another feature that allows the Snapdragon 730 to offer improved performance is the 8nm process node technology used to fabricate the chipset. Smaller process nodes tend to require lower voltages during operation, which results in lower power consumption and production of waste heat. Since chipset operation generates less heat compared to other processors, the Snapdragon 730 more effectively maintains its top clock speed, and consequently, its maximum performance. Moreover, the lower power consumption translates to better battery life for the devices that run newer chipsets.
However, users should note that the Snapdragon 730 is not the best performing mid-range chipset that Qualcomm currently offers. With its overclocked Adreno 618 GPU, the Snapdragon 730G offers up to a 15-percent performance improvement compared to the Snapdragon 730. Moreover, the Snapdragon 730G also supports features like Jank Reducer, which helps reduce stuttering and maintain consistent frame rates while playing games
This latest benchmark result shows the capability of mid-range chipsets, which in turn significantly affects the user experience and performance offered by mid-tier smartphones. Eventually, the performance observed in higher mid-range chipsets will trickle down to cheaper semiconductors, which in turn benefits lower-end devices. However, it is interesting to see what these advancements could mean for premium devices, which previously boasted of substantially better performance as a selling point compared to mid-range smartphones.