Performance: Exynos vs. Snapdragon

Subsequently many weeks of trying, I managed to secure both the Qualcomm Snapdragon and Samsung Exynos variants of the Galaxy Note 3 for the performance section of this review. Similar to what we saw with the Galaxy S4, the two variants cover unlike markets: Snapdragon for LTE (SM-N9005), and Exynos for HSPA+ only (SM-N900). Aside from the differences in radios though, await some significant differences in many aspects of the internal hardware.

The Qualcomm-powered model uses the tried-and-truthful Snapdragon 800 MSM8974, which features a 2.26 GHz quad-cadre Krait 400 CPU, Adreno 330 GPU at 450 MHz, a 600 MHz Hexagon QDSP6V5A DSP, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and IZAT Gen8B GPS+GLONASS. There's also a dual-channel LPDDR3 retention controller that connects to 3 GB of RAM, providing bandwidth of around 12.8 GB/due south.

I've spoken about the Snapdragon 800 in a few of my previous device reviews – for the LG G2, Sony Xperia Z Ultra, Sony Xperia Z1 and Google Nexus 5 – so it's best to go back and check those for more than details on the SoC.

The Exynos model is, in many respects, a more interesting device to discuss. The last time I used an Exynos-powered device was the HSPA+ only Galaxy S4 model, and there were several issues that made is simply not worth considering compared to the Snapdragon 600 model. It was slower, featured worse battery life, and lacked some disquisitional camera and connectivity features.

The Galaxy Note 3 SM-N900 doesn't use the same Exynos five Octa 5410 SoC as the Galaxy S4 though, instead packing the upgraded Exynos v Octa 5420. It's nonetheless built on the same ARM big.LITTLE foundations – 4 ARM Cortex-A15 CPU cores at 1.nine GHz plus four ARM Cortex-A7 cores at 1.three GHz – but withal lacks the key inclusion of heterogeneous multi-processing (HMP).

What is so proficient nigh HMP? In the Exynos Galaxy S4 (and also with the Note 3), information technology was but possible to use one prepare of CPU cores at a fourth dimension. If the controller wanted to switch from power-saving A7 cores to high-performance A15s (imagine the transition from music playing to web browsing), it would need to power up the A15 cluster, migrate the task, then power down the A7 cluster. The whole process took up valuable fourth dimension, and the Milky way S4 was noticeably laggy whenever it needed to migrate between the clusters.

HMP completely ditches the cluster migration model by assuasive all eight cores to run simultaneously. Music playback tin can be tasked to the A7 cores as web browsing is tasked to the A15s, with no switchover necessary, and no noticeable lag. The HMP model is the ideal ARM big.LITTLE implementation, as it not only provides more processing power and flexibility, but better power management. For united states end users, we should experience a faster processor with ameliorate battery life.

Unfortunately, while the Exynos 5420 supports HMP, it has not been enabled in the Galaxy Note iii due to thermal envelope concerns. This is very disappointing to hear, still the cluster migration technique has been improved somewhat, removing the noticeable lag as tasks transition from ane cluster to some other.

Likewise as a tweaked CPU setup, the GPU has been upgraded from the PowerVR SGX544MP3 to the Mali-T628 MP6, clocked at somewhere effectually 480 MHz, providing an (on-newspaper) doubling of graphics performance. At that place'due south also a slightly faster 14.9 GB/s dual-aqueduct LPDDR3e memory controller (also paired to 3 GB of RAM).

Connectivity-wise, the Exynos 5 Octa falls behind the Snapdragon 800, packing just 42 Mbps HSPA+ (no LTE). However, there is still the usual Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS+GLONASS and NFC.

Information technology's all well and proficient talking about the hardware and specifications of the two Galaxy Annotation 3s, only thus far I've ignored how well both devices actually perform. Unlike with the Galaxy S4, where there was a noticeable difference between the 2 models, both the Snapdragon and Exynos Note 3 variants perform extremely well. Just similar any other flagship telephone of 2022, the SoC capably handles any task thrown at it, from web browsing to app usage.

The extra GB of RAM (compared to other tiptop-end Android handsets) allows a greater number of apps to be stored in the groundwork, or so is Samsung's reasoning backside its inclusion. I actually didn't notice a smashing difference between the multi-tasking performance of the Galaxy Note three and other loftier-stop handsets with only ii GB of RAM. Loading apps from scratch is already extremely fast on the Snapdragon 800 or Exynos five Octa, so the extra RAM is merely shaving off a few milliseconds when accessing older previously used apps.

Gaming performance is also very adept from both Galaxy Note models. The Snapdragon variant appears to accept a slight edge over the Exynos variant, but both evangelize fantastic operation in the top 3D titles in the Google Play Store. There wasn't a single time where the Notation became too laggy to play, even when rendering at 1080p, which is exactly what you want to see.

What you don't want to encounter is benchmark cheating, which is exactly what Samsung does with both models of the Milky way Note 3. Out of the benchmarks we run, 3DMark and Vellamo are both afflicted, in that special lawmaking within the arrangement software forces the CPU to run at total speed in the benchmarks, regardless of the load. This sort of practice is extremely dodgy and designed to inflate the synthetic functioning of the device, and so go on that in mind when looking at the next few benchmarks.

In Peacekeeper, which is run within the stock browser (the Internet app), the Snapdragon-powered Note 3 posted a significant speed advantage over the Exynos model. With four cores clocked higher (2.26 GHz vs. ane.9 GHz), the SM-N9005 was 33% faster.

In Vellamo, the performance difference was less significant. In the HTML5 test, designed to simulate web browsing, the Snapdragon Annotation 3 was six% faster. The deviation betwixt the two models was negligible in the Metal criterion, which looks at the performance of many aspects of the handset.

When benchmarking graphics performance, the Snapdragon model was 29% faster in 3DMark and 8% faster in GFXBench. This is the same sort of small performance gap we saw with the Exynos and Snapdragon variants of the Galaxy S4.

For the showtime time in a handset I've reviewed, the Galaxy Note 3 includes a microUSB 3.0 port forth the lesser edge, pregnant information technology can transfer to and from your PC much faster than other devices. The connector itself is large and a piffling bad-mannered – it'due south unremarkably used just on portable hard drives – but information technology certainly does the trick, assuasive y'all to transfer information from the internal NAND more than than twice as fast equally USB 2.0. Interestingly, USB 3.0 isn't enabled by default when you connect the Note to a supported PC, but borer on the USB icon in the notification pane reveals the option.

While not included in my criterion every bit seen above, the inclusion of USB 3.0 also speeds up transfers to and from microSD cards, providing you lot have a high-operation i. Copying a option of music from my 32 GB Grade 10 microSD to my PC was around 1.5x faster through the Galaxy Note 3's USB iii.0 option, with write speeds staying roughly the same (due to microSD performance limitations).

I didn't have any difficulties with mobile network functioning, achieving around fourteen Mbps downwardly through HSPA+ or up of 25 Mbps down through Optus LTE. Signal strength appears to exist very skilful, likely helped by the inclusion of a larger antenna due to the larger phone size. Unfortunately I wasn't able to test Wi-Fi 802.11ac in the SM-N9005, simply otherwise dual-ring Wi-Fi northward was quite speedy. I also plant no issues with Bluetooth, GPS or NFC, all of which worked as advertised.

Both the Exynos and Snapdragon models are capable of 1080p encoding and decoding, offer stutter-complimentary playback of your Blu-ray rips. The Snapdragon model has a one-up in that it tin likewise decode 4K Ultra Hard disk drive content, but the lack of wide availability of this content means this characteristic is more for future-proofing than anything else.

Overall I was very impressed with the functioning of both Galaxy Note 3 models. The Snapdragon 800 once again flexes its muscles, topping the charts in both CPU and GPU functioning, but the Exynos 5 Octa is no slouch either. A few tweaks appear to have solved all of the stutter issues with the A15+A7 big.LITTLE implementation, despite HMP still going missing, and largely in that location is no noticeable operation departure in real-earth usage when comparing Exynos to Snapdragon.

I would still stick to the Snapdragon model (if possible) due to the inclusion of LTE, 4K encoding/decoding and Wi-Fi 802.11ac, only this time around both choices are close enough that Exynos owners aren't hugely disadvantaged.