Mediatek have really pulled their finger out over the past year or so with some really solid chip launches, but it’s the Helio X30 that the company hopes will really take on the top guns.
The past 12 months has seen some really interesting chipsets from Mediatek. The MT6752 really kicked it all off being a solid performer at a good price. The MT6752 didn’t last long though as Mediatek pushed their Helio range out starting with the X10 (which powers LeTV, Meizu and Xiaomi phones) and followed by the Helio X20 (so far only seen in the Zopo Speed 8 and Doogee F7).
With the Helio X20 just showing up in phones, we’ve been watching Mediatek to hear news of their next chipset, and it hasn’t taken long before some of the potential details have been released.
Gizchina News of the week
COO of Mediatek, Zhu Shangzu, has been speaking highly of his company’s next flagship processor, and says that the X30 will be the chip that could topple premium SoC’s from rivals Qualcomm and Samsung.
Apparently the Mediatek Helio X30 will be another 10 core chipset this time built on a 16nm architecture. The 10 cores will be split between 2 x 1.0Ghz Cortex A53 cores, 2 x 1.5Ghz A53, after those cores are used the chip will go in to turbo mode switching to 2 x 2Ghz A72 cores and then a possible 4 x 2.5Ghz A72 cores.
What will really be interesting though is if Mediatek can do better on the graphical side of things with the Helio X30. Mediatek chips generally do well on the CPU side, but are largely let down in the graphics departments. Can Mediatek get a better balance next time around?
They really should be going for a Mali T880-MP8 as the minimum with possibility the PowerVR GT7600 as the preferred GPU of choice. I feel that a grave mistake MediaTek did which prevented a good SOC like the Helio X10 from being a great SOC was the use of the PowerVR GT6200 instead of the GT6430.
Correct
I actually have the X10 and I do believe it’s a great SOC. Yes I did test the GPU against a Snapdragon 801 and it only got half the score.
You know what though I don’t really give a crap. Yes I do understand that some people play games and need a good GPU but there are lots of others that don’t and those just need a GPU to handle the Android UI and a snappy CPU to make everything run smooth and fast.
I like what Mediatek is going and I don’t want to pay more for a better GPU. I’m pretty sure they’re putting in weak GPUs on purpose to keep the costs down and so far it seems to be working pretty well for them.
A bigger issue I see is that X20 is still MIA for some reason.
I’m typing this from my LeTV Le 1S which I just got in the mail this past week and I have to say it’s everyday performance is great. This phone is replacing the OnePlus One I purchased last February which has served me admirably, in addition I’ve also purchased a Xioami Redmi Note 3 Pro which I should be receiving in the next week or so.
If I had to choose between CPU power vs GPU power I’d take CPU anyday of the week since that is will make the most of my daily experience. The reason I said what I did is because MediaTek makes great but unbalanced SOCs because they intentionally skimp out on beefy GPU but we are fastly approach the era of low level APIs. Vulkan will be a huge deal on Android and this will make better GPUs a necessity. Just look at the Redmi Note 3 Pro the only reason Xioami dumped MediaTek was mainly due to the weak GPUs in the SOCs.
I disagree with the last part of the comment.
Xiaomi didn’t dump Mediatek
(Not yet at least)
The Mediatek version of their phones are still on sale.
The Redmi Note 3 Pro was meant mostly for the Indian market where they have been banned on selling Mediatek phones.
If that were the only reason then Xiaomi would never have sold the Redmi 3 Pro outside of India nor would they have given it the Pro moniker. It was clearly meant as an upgrade to the original Redmi 3, if you compare benchmarks between the SD650 vs the Helio X10 they are in different leagues, the SD650 performs very close to last year’s flagship SOCs the SD810 and Exynos 7422. So basically you’re getting last year’s $599-799 level performance for $199-$229.
It is an upgrade,i never said differently. They also put a better camera sensor and added SD card slot.
But this doesn’t mean that they dumped Mediatek.
Owning this phone I can tell you that it’s not even close to last year flagships, and you will find out yourself in few days.
Expect a very buggy ROM
you’re wrong! s650 is a great overall soc than x10 not only on the gpu that why xiaomi ditch x10 in redmi note 3.
do you think so? For gaming you basically need a minimum of MP8 .. Samsung’s MP12 is significantly weaker than the adreno 530.
Otherwise though, this is mostly just a waste of silicon.
It’s what I would consider bare minimum since such a GPU would produce Xbox 360/PS3 level graphics on a phone. The Adreno 530 is a massive 256 ALU GPU for a phone with performance approaching that of the Tegra X, that GPU was intentionally made as overkill so Qualcomm could make a statement to those to trashed them for the failure of the SD810.
As I stated in another comment this level of GPU power will matter when Vulkan becames mainstream on Android and more GPGPU functionality comes to mobile SOCs. I don’t ever expect MediaTek to trade GPU performance blows with the likes of Qualcomm or Imagination if they were they would have purchased Vivante for chump change. I do however expect MediaTek to atleast provide GPU performance that is in the same ballpark which as of now they’re still playing AAA ball.
Samsung has it clocked at just 650mhz. Kirin 950 has T880 MP4 clocked at 900mhz, Check its performance. (Mate 8 review Anandtech).
X30 is rumored to come with T880 MP6 clocked at 900mhz. Its performance should be as good or better than the Snapdragon 810 and exynos 7.
Core count is not everything, Clock speed matters too. Samsung used 12 cores at less clock speed just for marketing it.
PS – Which will sustain the performance longer is still a debate.
According to rumors, It will come with the Mali T880 MP6, It looks like half the power of Exynos 8890, but not true.
The T880 MP12 in exynos is clocked at 650mhz. While the T880 MP4 in Kirin 950 is clocked at 900mhz and 700mhz in Helio X20.
The Helio X30 is rumored to come with T880 MP6 at 900mhz. its performance sould match or better Snapdragon 810 and beat Kirin 950 easily.
IMO, Thats a very good overall SOC. Not in the Snapdragon 820 level but good enough for 1080p screens or even QHD.
What i hate is, this will probably not be seen in any phones before 2017. If it would have launched now instead of the X20, it would have given good competition to other flagship SOCs.
Helio X20 is more in line with SD650 and SD652.
Everybody knows Their gpus far behind competition (if there is competition) which is the most important part of SoC for a lot of people. I don’t believe using mp8 configuration instead of mp4 would increase their cost dramatically but they couldn’t gain foothold neither in West nor High end segment because of this choice which they are insisting. Simply I can’t believe such a company not trying to enter these markets seriously.
The company has to focus on profit and maybe they target on different customers
They haven’t yet targeted the very high end yet so you don’t know what they’ll do when they will target it.
Additionally the GPU perf you see in high end is marketing. Look at Exynos 8890 in the Edge sustained perf going 42% down http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/1147/images/S7EdgeChart-21.jpg
With “a lot oft people” you mean those 5-10% of the overall Smartphone marketshare who occasinally run demanding games on their smartphones?