Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 vs Samsung Exynos 2100 Compared: Specifications & Benchmarks. Will the Exynos Galaxy S21 be as good as the Qualcomm variant in the US?

Yesterday at CES 2021, Samsung formally announced its flagship mobile chipset for the year, the Exynos 2100.

In previous years, Samsung has developed its own performance CPU microarchitecture for these chipsets, but that division has now been closed down, and Samsung are using Arm’s Cortex cores such as the new X1.

The decision to ditch the Exynos M cores could possibly be related to the regular criticism the flagship Exynos chipset has received in recent years.

So this new Arm based chipset aims to get Samsung back on form with an overall specification that is much more similar to the Qualcomm chipset.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 vs Samsung Exynos 2100 Specifications Comparison

SoC	Snapdragon 888	Exynos 2100	Kirin 9000 5G
CPU	1x ARM Cortex-X1 @ 2.84 GHz	1x Cortex-X1 @ 2.9GHz	1x Cortex A77 @ 3.13Ghz
	3x ARM Cortex-A78 @ 2.42 GHz	3x Cortex-A78 @ 2.8GHz	3x Cortex A77 @ 2.54Ghz
	4x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz	4x Cortex A55 @ 2.2GHz	4x Cortex A55@ 2.05Ghz
GPU	Qualcomm Adreno 660 +35% perf vs SD865	Mali G78MP14 @ ? MHz +35% perf vs Exynos 990	Mali-G78 24 Cores
APU / NPU	Hexagon 780 26 TOPS AI	Triple NPU + DSP 26 TOPs	2 big core, 1 tiny core
Memory	3200MHz LPDDR5 / 51.2GB/s 3MB system level cache	LPDDR5 @ ?MHz ?MB System Cache	LPDDR5 / LPDDR 4X
ISP/Camera	Triple 14-bit Spectra 580 ISP 1x 200MP or 84MP with ZSL 64+25MP with ZSL 3x 28MP with ZSL 4K video & 64MP burst capture	Single: 200MP Dual: 32MP+32MP (Up to quad simultaneous camera)	quad-core, 6th gen ISP
Modem	X60 integrated (5G NR Sub-6 + mmWave) DL = 7500 Mbps UL = 3000 Mbps	Exynos Modem Integrated (5G NR Sub-6) DL = 5100 Mbps UL = 1920Mbps (5G NR mmWave) DL = 7350 Mbps UL = 3670 Mbps	Balong 5000 4G + 5G NR NSA+SA Sub-6GHz
Process	Samsung 5nm (5LPE)	Samsung 5nm (5LPE)	TSMC 5nm

CPU & Fabrication prices

Both Qualcomm and Samsung are using the same Samsung 5nm LPE fabrication process, so they are on level footing from the start.

They also have the same basic CPU layout, but, on paper at least, the Samsung offers a superior spec with higher frequencies across the board.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 888
- 1x ARM Cortex-X1 @ 2.84 GHz
- 3x ARM Cortex-A78 @ 2.42 GHz
- 4x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz
Samsung Exynos 2100
- 1x Cortex-X1 @ 2.9GHz
- 3x Cortex-A78 @ 2.8GHz
- 4x Cortex A55 @ 2.2GHz

In particular, the middle and efficient cores have a massive difference in clocks, with the A78 cores being 15% higher and the A55 cores 22% higher.

On the one hand, this is exciting, giving us hope Samsung may have the most powerful chipset on the market. However, one of the main criticisms in recent years is the poor performance of the battery on Exynos phones. Higher clocks equal shorter battery, so we will have to wait and see how much this affects the phones battery performance.

GPU

Comparisons on the GPU are harder, Qualcomm use the Qualcomm Adreno 660 which Samsung are using the Mali G78MP14.

Samsung claims a 40% improvement vs the previous Exynos 990, and Qualcomm claimed 35% improvement vs the SD865.

While the Kirin 9000 using on Huawei phones can’t compete with the CPU, that has a massive 24 core Mali-G78, so it will be interesting to see how the Samsung and Kirin GPU compete against each other.

Modem & Connectivity

Both Samsung and Qualcomm now have integrated 5G modems, but the Samsung is essentially the same Exynos 5123 modem we saw on the Exynos 990.

I was hoping to see some mention of the Wi-Fi within the press releases, but nothing is mentioned at all. The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 supports the latest Wi-Fi 6E with 6Ghz.

Camera & Video

Both companies are claiming big improvements with the camera processing. The new Samsung chip supports single-sensors up to 200MP, while also connecting up to a total of 6 camera sensors, and simultaneously running 4 of them in parallel.

The Qualcomm can only handle 3 simultaneous cameras.

The Samsung encoder has been updated to support up to 8K60 video decoding, although encoding has remained at 8K30/4K120. It now also supports AV1 decoding, something Qualcomm omitted and MediaTek implemented last year.

Benchmarks

The Samsung Exynos 2100 has only just been announced and no phones launched running so we have no official benchmarks. Several leaks have come out indicating performance.

The Xiaomi Mi 11 has been released and I have it myself so the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 benchmarks are genuine results carried out by myself.

All benchmarks are done in the default state, no performance mode or anything like that.

Geekbench

Early leaks of the Qualcomm had it going up to 1,204/ 4,121 with a second leak of 1,105/3,512.

My result was 1139/3693, which is excellent and in line with the second leak.

The Samsung has been claimed to achieve 1,323/4,215, which seems believable based on the higher clocked cores.

Antutu

For the Xiaomi Mi 11 using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, I was able to achieve a monstrous score of 690,985 which is almost 20% higher than the SD865 on the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro.

Reports of poor thermals are a concern here. During the test, my battery went up 9 degrees c vs 4.5 degrees c when I tested the Mi 10T Pro.

No Antutu Exynos 2100 results are available yet.

3DMark

For 3D mark, I don’t think there have been any leaks of the Exynos 2100 yet, but the Snapdragon 888 achieved:

Sling Shot Extreme: 8274
Wild Lift: 5663

Battery Life

There is no word on how the Samsung and Qualcomm perform with battery efficiency, but I will update this section when more data comes in.

During my testing of the Xiaomi Mi 11, it performs well, but not class-leading. I can easily get a full days worth of real-world use out of it

For reference, I managed 9h 35mins using the PC Mark Work 2.0 battery life test which is about the same as the Realme X50 Pro from last year, but less than all the other flagship phones I reviewed (which was a limited selection). The Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro with its 5000 mAh battery achieved almost double at 19h 45mins.

Overall

A lot of people see sceptical about the Samsung Exynos 2100, disappointed that we are once again having an Exynos based Galaxy S21 in the UK while the US gets Qualcomm.

I am feeling a little more optimistic towards it, on paper, it looks good, in theory, it should be more powerful, but it is the battery life that needs to be good, or at least comparable to Qualcomm.

Posted by Mighty Gadget Blog: UK Technology News and Reviews