MediaTek Catching Up With Snapdragon 810 In Benchmarks

Qualcomm's latest flagship chip, the Snapdragon 810, is already under a lot of pressure for certain issues, warranted or not. It could probably do with less problems but it seems that rival MediaTek won't let it catch a break. The latter's upcoming chip, a certain MT6795, is now said to be on par with the Snapdragon 810. That is, at least based on leaked benchmark scores. Whether that will be enough to catapult MediaTek to the forefront of the mobile chips race is another question entirely.

When it comes to processors for smartphones and tablets, Qualcomm is undoubtedly a household name. But although it has a range of products that embrace all tiers of devices, when it comes to really budget smartphones, MediaTek is the name of the game. It is no secret, however, that the Taiwanese manufacturer has its eyes on part of Qualcomm's premium pie, and this MT6795 might be its ticket.

Based on a leaked Geekbench score, the MT6795 reaches a multi-core performance of 4536. That's quite higher than the Snapdragon 810's grade as it is found in the LG G Flex2, which is 4345, and even higher than the 4254 that we saw on our own hands-on of the chip. Curiously, MediaTek's chip flops when it comes to single-core processing, which uses up less power in theory. There is scores only 886 versus Qualcomm's 1144 (1318 in our hands-on). Both chips are 64-bit octa-core processors.

Will that be enough to put MediaTek in the lead? Probably not soon. Besides the Snapdragon 810, the chip maker also has to get past other contenders, like Samsung's Exynos and, probably more importantly, NVIDIA's new Tegra X1. Besides, we're just talking about raw CPU power here. MediaTek's Mali-based GPUs will have to butt heads with Qualcomm's Adrenos. And that's not yet taking into account other features like power consumption, digital signal processing (DSP), security, and a whole lot more.

MediaTek's MT6795 isn't schedule to ship until the end of Q1 this year, which could give it some time before Qualcomm's partners start flooding the market with its chips. But more than just raw performance, MediaTek will need high-profile OEMs to carry its brand forward if it really wants a piece of that pie.

VIA: G for Games