Almost every time Samsung releases the Galaxy S series in the market, the question that always arises is, "Why not the Snapdragon version?" Now, that Samsung has brought the Snapdragon version of the Galaxy S22 series to the market, and the question that arises is, "Why not the Exynos version?"
Actually, these two questions are not wrong either. The reason is that several generations of Galaxy S to the back that were released on the market use the Exynos on a chip (SoC) system whose performance is relatively lower than the Galaxy S variant with Snapdragon SoC.
While the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 used in the market version of the Galaxy S22, although it does have fast performance, it has one problem that has existed since Snapdragon 888. On the other hand, Exynos 2200 has one new thing that has never existed before, namely a graphics chip with AMD's flagship RDNA 2 architecture.
For information, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Exynos 2200 have similarities in the CPU sector. They are both made by Samsung Foundry with a 4nm LPE process, and use cores with the latest Arm v9 architecture.
The core configuration is the same. Namely a Cortex-X2 core, three Cortex-A710, and four Cortex-A510 cores.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
So far there are only a few phones in the world that use Qualcomm's flagship SoC for 2022. Among others are OnePlus 10 Pro, Realme GT 2 Pro, Moto Edge 30 Ultra and Xiaomi 12. So the review of the performance of this SoC is arguably still limited.
In a Golden Reviewer review, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 on Moto Edge 30 Ultra can indeed produce fast performance when used to play Genshin Impact, but only in the first four minutes.
After that, the temperature increases and performance begins to decrease, which is indicated by the frame rate dropping so that the game looks sluggish. In fact, its performance decreases to 40% to stabilize the temperature.
Of course, the performance and temperature of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 can vary on other phones, according to the handling provided by the phone maker. What's more, this SoC uses the latest architecture, namely Arm v9 which is made using Samsung's 4nm fabrication, which should be very efficient in power consumption.
The more efficiently the power consumed should make the less heat generated by the chip. That's the theory.
Then what about Samsung's own SoC, the Exynos 2200, which is also made using a similar architecture and the same 4nm fabrication?
Reported by Wccftech, the ability of the Exynos 2200 CPU was not satisfactory. From tests conducted by TechAltar, the Exynos 2200 CPU is only 5% faster than the Exynos 2100 used in the Galaxy S21.
Surely the GPU is fast, right? It's made using AMD's flagship RDNA 2 architecture which is also used on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Ah, not really. According to TechAltar, the Exclipse 920 GPU in the Exynos 2200 is only 17% faster than the Mali-G78 MP14 used in the Exynos 2100.
The biggest improvements have been in the neural processing unit (NPU) sector, which is responsible for all the performance of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the like. The NPU in the Exynos 2200 is an 115% increase compared to the Exynos 2100.
Although the GPU performance only increased slightly compared to the Exynos 2100, the Xclipse 920 GPU has one feature that other GPUs in the mobile realm don't have. Namely, support for hardware acceleration of ray tracing and variable rate shading, which according to Samsung was previously only available on PCs, laptops, and consoles.
"Like an eclipse, the Xclipse GPU will end the old era of mobile gaming and mark the start of an exciting new chapter (in mobile gaming)," Samsung wrote in a statement.
For information, ray tracing is a technology that can simulate light like in the real world. For example the effect of light reflections, or shadows from glass or mirrors, which (usually) can be displayed very realistically, at least on PCs, laptops, and consoles.
It is not yet known whether ray tracing on this mobile GPU will have an effect, because of course there must also be support from game and application developers.