So what phone has the better 3d chip? iPhone 3gs/Pre/Droid or Evo?

[MannyZ28]

I have seen a few videos of benchmark tests in which the iphone 3gs handily beats a Nexus One with almost twice the fps. I also saw the video on the Android Central home page where the Droid manages better fps than the Incredible. Lastly, I have seen Asphalt 5 from Gameloft being played on both the Moto Droid and a Nexus One, and it runs noticably smoother on the Droid. I would say it runs equally smooth on the Pre as it does on the Droid, and if I am not mistaken, the 3gs, Droid, and Pre have similar 3d hardware.

So, does that mean that the superchip Snapdragon has a suckier 3d core? Or is it just bad implementation for that chip in the current SDK.

I am glad to see that Gameloft is starting to port games to Android, but I am not so happy to see that the newer hardware is struggeling when compared to the last gen phones.

 

[jpdaballa]

From what I know the 3gs and pre have the same hardware but the 3gs is still a little bit better.

I don't think it matters who's is better, it matters on how its implemented into the os.

I wish I knew

Think of the new processors like normal computer processors,

95% of apps dont use all 4 cores in a quad core because they are still fairly new, and technology is rising very fast. maybe to fast for developers to keep up.

the same is going on with the snapdragon

the sdk will probably be updated sooner or later

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

One thing you have to consider (I posted the video with better FPS on a hero) is that my screen resolution is less, so is the Pre's and so is the 3GS. The Nexus 1 and Incredible have to cram a lot more information than the Hero, Pre, Iphone to produce an image. You really can't compare the devices one-on-one like engadget did a while back.

 

[MannyZ28]

rufflez, are you also talking about that video with the spinning room and those kung fu people dishing it out? I was wondering the same thing about how fair that test is seeing that the Nexus One has a higher resolution to deal with.

I have been doing some reading on the internet and it seems that the two GPUs used is a Power VR SG chip on the Omap 3 which is in the Pre, droid, 3gs, vs an AMD Z430 gpu on the Snapdragon. The consensus seems to be that the Power VR chip is the better GPU.

Not sure why they went that route, but hopefully there will be driver optimizations that will make the Snapdragon combo come out on top.

I for one that someone with an Incredible will buy Asphalt 5 ASAP so we can see if it is as laggy on that phone as it is on the Nexus One.

 

[jpdaballa]

I really do hope this is as good as the iphone when it comes to gaming, I can imagine playing nintendo ds on that big screen in class when my professor is yapping about his daughter or something

 

[Mystic205]

graphics devices need to work with both FPS and pixel count. pick your poison.

 

[fr4nk1yn]

Lets go another route.

The Nexus One and Incredible are HTC phones with a Qualcomm chip.
The others are not built by HTC with TI chips.

HTC a few years ago had horrible 3D performance because they "didn't license drivers from Qualcomm".
Old 200mhz devices had better 3D performance than say the Touch Pro. The issue was never resolved.

Could this be the same type of deal?

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

I really do hope this is as good as the iphone when it comes to gaming, I can imagine playing nintendo ds on that big screen in class when my professor is yapping about his daughter or something

Your good, the emulators out in the market currently work great pretty much on any android device.

 

[jpdaballa]

Your good, the emulators out in the market currently work great pretty much on any android device.

as much as i hate to dump palm the evo with android is looking pretty good right about now lol.

 

[MannyZ28]

Lets go another route.

The Nexus One and Incredible are HTC phones with a Qualcomm chip.
The others are not built by HTC with TI chips.

HTC a few years ago had horrible 3D performance because they "didn't license drivers from Qualcomm".
Old 200mhz devices had better 3D performance than say the Touch Pro. The issue was never resolved.

Could this be the same type of deal?

I am pretty sure that is no longer the case, because the GPU is active, if it weren't none of that stuff would run to begin with.

 

[MannyZ28]

I am kinda answering my own question here, but I did some research and ran into this little tidbit of information....

Current Mobile GPUs: Triangles/sec, Fill Rate

PowerVR MBX-Lite (iPhone 3G): 1 M triangles/s, 100 M pixels/s
Samsung S3C6410 (Omnia II): 4 M triangles/s, 125.6 M pixels/s
PowerVR SGX 520 (Palm Pre): 14 M triangles/s, ___ M pixels/s
ATI Imageon Z430 (Toshiba TG01): 22 M triangles/s, 133 M pixels/s
PowerVR SGX 535 (iPhone 3GS): 28 M triangles/s, 400 M pixels/s

Future Mobile GPUs:

PowerVR SGX 540 (TI OMAP4): 35 M triangles/s, 1000 M pixels/s
Nvidia Tegra APX2500 (Zune HD): 40 M triangles/s, 600 M pixels/s
ATI Imageon _ (Qualcomm QSD8672): 80 M triangles/s, >500 M pixels/s

As a side-note, this means the iPhone 3GS' graphic chip may very well be faster than the Toshiba TG01's first-gen (QSD8250) Snapdragon. The next Snapdragon (QSD8672, the dual-core 45nm model in the new Smartbooks) has the latest GPU from the former ATI Imageon team (now part of Qualcomm), which demolishes the PowerVRs and Tegra. Unfortunately it probably won't be hitting phones for a while, so looks iPhone 3GS is top dog for now. Tegra's GPU is fast, but its slow ARM11 CPU will hold it back in general performance.

Looks like the Z430 is an OK GPU, it just pales in comparison to the iPhone 3GS fillrate. But with some optimizing, it should be good enough for most games. I wish they would have indicated what the fillrate on the Pres GPU was.

Oh, and for raw cpu power, the Snapdragon owns the current iPhone 3GS with 2100 mips compared to 1300 mips (million instructions per second)

 

[Complex Pants]

Now if my Zune HD only had games worthy of playing.....

I have been wanting to see a tegra 2 or OMAP4 device in action for a long time. Maybe Palm will include that in their next device, if there is a next device.

 

[Corriewf]

Sorry but which one does the EVO use?

 

[MannyZ28]

The ATI Imageon Z430.

 

[Corriewf]

Wow that's what I though and that sucks....

 

[Litt]

Wait, I'm a total noob when it comes to this stuff. Does that chart mean that the Z430 sucks or rocks? Wouldn't "22 M triangles/s, 133 M pixels/s" be better then "1 M triangles/s, 100 M pixels/s" (22 Million Triangles per sec vs 1 Million Triangles per sec?).

 

[MannyZ28]

Well what it means it compares fairly well in the triangles test, beating the Pre, and is 6 million short to the 3GS, but it gets owned by the 3GS by the fill rate. What that means is that while it can calculate triangles fairly fast, it's not so fast at filling them, which is a bit of a problem. I would really like to know what the fill rate of the Pre's gpu is because I know that Asphalt 5 runs smoothly on the Pre eventhough the Pres triangle calculation speed is quite a bit lower than the z430s.

 

[Complex Pants]

Also, take into account that CPU's are used in gaming as well. It is possible that you have to look at the combination of the two to see how the chipset actually performs.

YouTube - Gameloft Asphalt 5 on Nexus One

 

[fry8]

So why does the htc evo have a crappier graphics card than a year old iphone?

 

[MannyZ28]

So why does the htc evo have a crappier graphics card than a year old iphone?

It's about licensing. Qualcomm bought ATI/AMD/Imageon which is why they are using that particular chip.