Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 vs Snapdragon 730 vs MediaTek Helio G90T vs HiSilicon Kirin 810 – How does last years flagship compare to this years upper mid-range chipsets?

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 was launched almost two years ago, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is due to be replaced with the Snapdragon 865. Earlier this year the Snapdragon 710 was superseded by the new Snapdragon 730 and as technology improves the performance trickles down with generations. So how do this year’s upper-midrange chipsets compare with the flagship Qualcomm of last year? Related Content

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CPU

The Snapdragon 845 adopted a 4×4 design before switching to 1x3x4 for this year. It is made on the 10nm fabrication process and this includes 4x Kryo 385 Gold (Cortex-A75)@2.8 GHz and 4x Kryo 385 Silver (Cortex-575)@1.7 GHz CPUs. The Snapdragon 730 is made on a smaller 8nm fabrication process and uses a 2×6 design with 2x Kryo 470 Gold (ARM Cortex-A76) @2.2 GHz and 6x Kryo 470 Silver (ARM Cortex-A55) @1.8 GHz CPUs. The MediaTek Helio G90T uses a much larger 12nm fabrication process but comes close to the Snapdragon 730 with specs using 2x 2.05 GHz Cortex-A76 and 6x 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 2.0 GHz CPUs. Finally, the Kirin which is made on the smallest fabrication process of the three uses 2x Cortex-A76 2.27 GHz and 6x Cortex-A55 @1.88 GHz. In theory, this should mean all three of this year’s upper mid-range chips perform at similar levels for CPU performance. The MediaTek Helio G90T is perhaps the weakest with the largest fabrication process and the lowest clocked performance cores.

GPU

Qualcomm uses Andreno for their GPUs and the SD845 has the Adreno 630 @600MHz and the SD730 has the Adreno 618 @825. While the MediaTek Helio G90T was perhaps the weakest CPU it may have the strongest GPU with a four-core Mali-G76 running at 800 MHz. In contrast, the Kirin 810 uses a 6 core Mali-G52 running @850 MHz. All the three chips support necessary API OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.0, OpenCL 2.0, DirectX 12, bit the Helio G90T supports latest Vulkan 1.1 API as well.

Benchmarks

Geekbench

  While benchmarks don’t represent real-world performance, they are good at highlighting differences between chipsets and the results are quite interesting. In the single-core Geekbench results all the chips score similar results with last years flagship SD845 coming in 3rd with just 2433. In the last position is the MediaTek Helio G90T with just 2410 which was expected due to it having lower frequencies for its powerful cores. Next up is the Snapdragon 730 with 2552 which shows how much of an improvement the ARM Cortex-A76 has over the A75 as this CPU is clocked lower than the A75 of the SD845. Finally, the winner, the Kirin 810 with 2746 which again was expected as this had the largest clocks for the A76 cores. Multicore results is a little different, while the ARM Cortex-A75 is not as good as the A76 the Snapdragon 845 has four of these vs two with all the other chipsets. This places the Snapdragon 845 in first with 9089. The last place is the Snapdragon 730 with 7049, then the MediaTek Helio G90T with 7193 and finally the second spot goes to the Kirin 810 with 7700.

Antutu

In Antutu the Snapdragon 845 has a comfortable lead over all the others with 297132 points but the Snapdragon 730 is biting at its heels with 259109 points. In third spot is the Kirin 810 with 237427 points and finally 222282 points for MediaTek Helio G90T. It is worth noting that there is some discrepancies with the Antutu results it has also been reported that both of these chipsets have scored in excess of 280k

AI Benchmark

The AI Benchmark also provides a very interesting result, but how useful AI performance is maybe up for debate. The HiSilicon Kirin 810 gets 35130 which is higher than any other chipset other than the HiSilicon Kirin 990 models. The Snapdragon 845 scores just 18591, almost half. Then the Snapdragon 730 with 15187 and finally the Mediatek Helio G90T with 12908.

Phones

One thing that is always worth considering if you want to save money is to buy the previous generation, you can currently buy the Sony Xperia XZ2 for £400 and the OnePlus 6T for £457.50. The current OnePlus 7T is £549 so you can potentially save yourself £100 going for last years model. Personally, I think the OP7T easily justifies the extra £100 but it is always worth looking in to. If you want a real bargain, there is always the Xiaomi Pocophone F1 which is currently just £289.99 In comparison the Snapdragon 730 which offers almost the same benchmark performance as last years Snapdragon 845 is featured on four amazing phones currently, all at different price points:

• Samsung Galaxy A80 – £579.00 
• Oppo Reno 2 – £469
• Xiaomi Redmi K20 / Xiaomi Mi 9T – £271.76 
• Realme X2 – £258 – via Amazon Spain

Both the MediaTek Helio G90T  and Kirin 810 are much harder to get hold of in the UK. The Kirin 810 is on the latest Huawei and Honor phones but due to the issues with America and Google Apps phones with this chipset have not been officially launched in the UK or EU. The Honor 9x Chinese version is available for under £200 via Geekbuying, whereas the UK version will use the older Kirin 7120 The MediaTek Helio G90T is currently only used on the Redmi Note 8 Pro again with no UK launch yet but is available via various grey importers for around £270 including on Amazon

Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 vs Snapdragon 730 vs MediaTek Helio G90T vs HiSilicon Kirin 810 Comparison Table

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