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Why Adreno GPU is better than Tegra 2 GPU.

Many people have said that SE should have put a Tegra 2 dual core chip inside the Xperia Play instead of the Snapdragon with Adreno 205.
In the real world the Adreno 205 was a much better choice for complex game effects and battery life.
This is a heavy read but there are plenty of charts & pictures that tell a fairer story from a Game Developers point of view.
http://blogs.unity3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/FastMobileShaders_siggraph2011.pdf
Here's hoping Tegra 3 is a much better effort.

First of all Tegra II is not a GPU. It's a CPU. So a more valid comparison would be snapdragon V's tegra II or Adreno V's GEforce.
Adreno 200 really was a poor GPU and qualcomm made a mess when they purchased the Adreno project off ATI. Although i think were all agreed that the jump from adreno 200 to adreno 205 was massive.
Adreno 205 is easly on par with the GPU in any single core CPU. I dont quite think it is a match for the 8 core ULV GPU inside the tegra II.
And imo NVIDA has proven with some of the tegra II games that the mobile version of GEforce inside there CPU is in a league of it's own compared to our GPU. Although i think Adreno 220 is on par with the Tegra II GPU. The soon to be released quad core tegra III CPU comes with such an awesome GPU it will be hard to beat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI-guAGGK3s

AndroHero said:
First of all Tegra II is not a GPU. It's a CPU. So a more valid comparison would be snapdragon V's tegra II or Adreno V's GEforce.
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I think I tried to say that in the post the header could have been a bit clearer.
Adreno 200 really was a poor GPU and qualcomm made a mess when they purchased the Adreno project off ATI. Although i think were all agreed that the jump from adreno 200 to adreno 205 was massive.
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Agree I have tried rudimentary GPU benchmarking on all my phones, the Xperia Play would have been severly weakened if it went ahead with using a Adreno 200 based SOC.
Adreno 205 is easly on par with the GPU in any single core CPU. I dont quite think it is a match for the 8 core ULV GPU inside the tegra II.
And imo NVIDA has proven with some of the tegra II games that the mobile version of GEforce inside there CPU is in a league of it's own compared to our GPU. Although i think Adreno 220 is on par with the Tegra II GPU. The soon to be released quad core tegra III CPU comes with such an awesome GPU it will be hard to beat
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I also thought the NVIDA GPU chip would be much better, but after reading the PDF I don't think it is. It looks like to get the best from the NVIDA GPU you have to use the CPU's much more than the Adreno 205 which will hit battery life. Also the Adreno looks like it has some hidden tricks that help in more complex scenes.
Give the PDF a read.

From the (very little, it is a really technical paper) content I can extract, it seems that the Nvidia Tegra devices follow a "classic approach" and load many more things on the CPU, while the Adreno and PowerVR (aka Apple's chip) follow a "smarter" approach, reducing the CPU load and loading the GPU, plus using tricks.
I'd say that, if that is correct, that it comes from the legacy of Nvidia as a desktop pc GPU maker, and that it makes sense that Nvidia is betting on getting multi-core devices out ASAP, for their approach is much more CPU-taxing and multiple cores allow to reduce CPU stress.

Techdread said:
I think I tried to say that in the post the header could have been a bit clearer.
Agree I have tried rudimentary GPU benchmarking on all my phones, the Xperia Play would have been severly weakened if it went ahead with using a Adreno 200 based SOC.
I also thought the NVIDA GPU chip would be much better, but after reading the PDF I don't think it is. It looks like to get the best from the NVIDA GPU you have to use the CPU's much more than the Adreno 205 which will hit battery life. Also the Adreno looks like it has some hidden tricks that help in more complex scenes.
Give the PDF a read.
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I did look at the .pdf. But to be honest, it's a little over my head lol
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Interesting results for the Adreno 205.
Shader Performance
•Normalized to iPad2 resolution
•From single color:
• 1.4ms iPad2
• 3.5ms XperiaPlay
• 3.8ms Tegra2
• 14.3ms iPhone3Gs
•To fully per-pixel bump spec:
• 19.3ms iPad2
• 18.4ms XperiaPlay
• 47.7ms Tegra2
• 122.4ms iPhone3Gs

hairdewx said:
Interesting results for the Adreno 205.
Shader Performance
•Normalized to iPad2 resolution
•From single color:
• 1.4ms iPad2
• 3.5ms XperiaPlay
• 3.8ms Tegra2
• 14.3ms iPhone3Gs
•To fully per-pixel bump spec:
• 19.3ms iPad2
• 18.4ms XperiaPlay
• 47.7ms Tegra2
• 122.4ms
Hmmmmmmm
Sent from my R800i using Tapatalk
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Double post......

AndroHero said:
The soon to be released quad core tegra III CPU comes with such an awesome GPU it will be hard to beat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI-guAGGK3s
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Holy cr*p that looks amazing!
When is the Tegra 3 and Adreno 220 coming out? which will be the best? tablet only or on phones too?

FK1983 said:
Holy cr*p that looks amazing!
When is the Tegra 3 and Adreno 220 coming out? which will be the best? tablet only or on phones too?
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Adreno 220 is already out with the dual core qualcomm chips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehfyxvh2W4k&feature=related
Although the game in the demo is desert winds, an xperia play (adreno 205) exclusive

Comparing dual core Qualcomm chips to the Tegra is like comparing our current chip to the Samsung hummingbird.
The former is more widely supported, and better optimized. Whereas the latter is not well supported, and although it's supposed to be better on paper, it's real life performance isn't as good.
Sent from my R800

Logseman said:
From the (very little, it is a really technical paper) content I can extract, it seems that the Nvidia Tegra devices follow a "classic approach" and load many more things on the CPU, while the Adreno and PowerVR (aka Apple's chip) follow a "smarter" approach, reducing the CPU load and loading the GPU, plus using tricks.
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Click to collapse
Thats the impression I got.
I'd say that, if that is correct, that it comes from the legacy of Nvidia as a desktop pc GPU maker, and that it makes sense that Nvidia is betting on getting multi-core devices out ASAP, for their approach is much more CPU-taxing and multiple cores allow to reduce CPU stress.
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Desktop and handheld are vastly different in power & heat requirements, NVidia were probably rushing their dual core SOC's to market the lack of NEON in initial shipments and poor GPU's seems to confirms this.

SGSIII Mali 400 Drivers on the note!

The folks at the HTC Sensation/EVO 3D section extracted the Adreno 225 drivers from the HTC One S, as some of you may know that the Adreno 225 is the same as the Adreno 220 GPU but just have double the frequency! the frequency has nothing to do here if you ask, using these drivers gave them a HUGE performance boost with the STOCK frequency
as we know that the Mali 400 GPU at the SGSIII is clocked at 400mhz but even if you clocked your Mali 400 GPU in your Note (which has the same Resolution) you wont be able to reach that performance which tells me that its all about the drivers just like the Adreno 225
So can the Developers extract the Mali 400 Drivers from the SGSIII so we can use it on our phones?
This is not a question so i think it belongs to here not the Q/A section as its just a discussion if this is going to work or not!

Same driver, bigger screen = performance loss.
That is why Sammy set CPU 200 Mhz faster on Note over S2.

Screen has NOTHING to do with anything the Resolution does, which is the same in the SGSIII and the Note
Also that's why i said if you overclock the GPU to 400mhz you still wont reach that performance so it has to do with the Drivers

The note and SGSIII do indeed have different different screen resolutions, the Note being at 1280x800, while the SGSIII is at 1280x720. not much of a difference though, basically 16:10 vs 16:9, respectively. I believe the new Mali400 Drivers will be in the next ROM update anyway.

Hell Guardian said:
The folks at the HTC Sensation/EVO 3D section extracted the Adreno 225 drivers from the HTC One S, as some of you may know that the Adreno 225 is the same as the Adreno 220 GPU but just have double the frequency! the frequency has nothing to do here if you ask, using these drivers gave them a HUGE performance boost with the STOCK frequency
as we know that the Mali 400 GPU at the SGSIII is clocked at 400mhz but even if you clocked your Mali 400 GPU in your Note (which has the same Resolution) you wont be able to reach that performance which tells me that its all about the drivers just like the Adreno 225
So can the Developers extract the Mali 400 Drivers from the SGSIII so we can use it on our phones?
This is not a question so i think it belongs to here not the Q/A section as its just a discussion if this is going to work or not!
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Well , if they are exactly the same just different clock speeds then I would think they should work indeed.
This is interesting and I certainly hope it does , not that at 400mhz or even less, the GPU is lacking but who does not like more performance for free?

Muskie said:
The note and SGSIII do indeed have different different screen resolutions, the Note being at 1280x800, while the SGSIII is at 1280x720. not much of a difference though, basically 16:10 vs 16:9, respectively. I believe the new Mali400 Drivers will be in the next ROM update anyway.
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I know that but that deference is not major by any mean to effect the performance that much is they are both have the same frequency
shaolin95 said:
Well , if they are exactly the same just different clock speeds then I would think they should work indeed.
This is interesting and I certainly hope it does , not that at 400mhz or even less, the GPU is lacking but who does not like more performance for free?
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My thoughts exactly, If they folks at the Sensation did it, why can't we?

Link of the Drivers that got extracted from the One S
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1643472
Just check the replies to see the performance boost, This is the EXACT same situation as the Note and the SGSIII GPU

Wow, that's a good boost.

nex7er said:
Wow, that's a good boost.
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I think if the Note users can have that kind of boost on their phones that will eliminate ANY kind of lag in the UI and it i will be Amazingly smooth it will also give huge boost to the SGSII users

if this really happened and it does work, what about the battery-life... can be poorer i think

In theory, I see where you're going with this, and in theory it sounds plausible. However, something that I think has been overlooked is the process design of the new S3's chipset vs the ones found in the current generation S2/Note (45nm vs 32nm). It's entirely possible that the only reason why Samsung is able to run the Mali-400 at 400mhz is due to the fact that the 32nm process is just that much more efficient, such that you can safely run at 400mhz using the same power as you would running at 266mhz on the 45nm process.
I just get the feeling that trying to push the 45nm process up to 400mhz might simply melt the silicon (or at least gobble your battery life in one gulp!). Call me defeatist if you have to, but I remain skeptical until I see evidence to the contrary.

I run my galaxy nexus with the GPU clocked to 512mhz (standard is 308mhz), and that cpu too uses the 45nm process.
Been running it like that for the last 3 months with no issue, and game fps is greatly improved.
Is there any kernels at all that even support over clocking the GNote gpu?

Very interesting, Would like to see this being investigated further for sure!

screen has nothing to do with it...on note we got 100k more pixels 1280x800-1280x720=100k
,,, and s3 has more cores in the mali-gpu...but yea i think the drivers would get us more performance

lyp9176 said:
if this really happened and it does work, what about the battery-life... can be poorer i think
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The sg s3 seems to have a decent battery life

resistant said:
screen has nothing to do with it...on note we got 100k more pixels 1280x800-1280x720=100k
,,, and s3 has more cores in the mali-gpu...but yea i think the drivers would get us more performance
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After some digging I found that the GPU In Exinos 4210(SGS2/Note) and 4412 (SGS3) is absolutely the same Mali 400MP4 (same number of GPU cores)! The only difference is that the 4412 GPU Can Go up to 400MHz (which is doable to our GPU too and have been done to the SGS2 already). The main difference here are the four CPU cores that help the GPU. I'm skeptical that the new drivers will do much (if at all) in terms of performance! Oh and lets not forget that the Adreno GPU Drivers are written by Qualcomm and they can't do anything right so the updated drivers may just be better written (or at least less buggier) than the old ones!

Manya3084 said:
I run my galaxy nexus with the GPU clocked to 512mhz (standard is 308mhz), and that cpu too uses the 45nm process.
Been running it like that for the last 3 months with no issue, and game fps is greatly improved.
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It has been proved to make very little improvement over a well developed kernal. Hence why developers like Franco and imyosen took it out.
Game frame rate is simply due to force gpu being active
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Mahoro.san said:
The sg s3 seems to have a decent battery life
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That is due to the new processor voltage and the low idle drain of the CPU
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GR36 said:
It has been proved to make very little improvement over a well developed kernal. Hence why developers like Franco and imyosen took it out.
Game frame rate is simply due to force gpu being active
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This during kernel development in the gingerbread days or the new current ics kernels?
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May be...
Clocking the GPU at 400Mhz would give a boost in performance but at the cost of battery life....and also making the phone really hot....which is not idle...just wait a little while and see how will s3 perform under those conditions...

What are nexus 4 GPU specifications

What are the specs of nexus 4 GPU
Means how many cores or the GPU clock?
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Can you change your title ?

jcgtreize said:
Can you change your title ?
Click to expand...
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Done
Its stupid keyboard auto correct
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Adreno 320 gpu. And you can't really refer to graphic cards as having cores per se, its not correct or accurate in any sense and is oy used as a marketing term. A cpu can have cores because every part of the processor is copied over. You could cut a dual core in half and it would still work. However with graphics cards that's not the case. There are many components to a graphics card, pixel rendering units, texturizers, gddram bus, etc etc too many to name. Generally companies like to clone one aspect of the GPU and call it a dual core, which isn't fair considering many other components of the chip haven't been duplicated. The company that comes closest to actually replicating every aspect of the GPU is imagination technologies (they make the powervrsgx 5 series cards used in the iPhone and iPad, hence their steller graphics performance) and even they don't do it perfectly.
What you really need to know is the performance, which is what it comes down to. Compared to the Mali 400+ GPU in the sgs3/note2 you'll probably get similar if not slightly better results. They're roughly equal, which makes the adreno 320 the most powerful GPU on the market aside from the powervrsgx540mp4 used in the iPad 3. But that's a tablet the most powerful mobile GPUs manafacuted right now by arm is the newest Mali T-series, those things are powerhouses!! There's five t-series graphics cards created, the weakest of the five is the t-604 used in the nexus 10 and even that is the most powerful GPU being mass produced. Here's a page with a list of the more powerful t series.
http://mobile.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics-hardware/mali-t604.php?setcookie=mobile
Hope I helped ))
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Here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1964850

Adreno vs Tegra vs PowerVR

Any performance-wise issues with the Adreno? Specifically when it comes HD gaming (I'm talking about NFS Most Wanted, N.O.V.A 3 etc)...
I have one bad example to share with the Adreno.
A friend has Xperia S that has Adreno GPU. NFS MW lags like hell...runs super smooth on my PowerVR...
So...don't you think a Tegra 3 would have been cherry on the icing...
Sent from my RaZr HD.

I heard that adreno is fine with HD gaming. But i really don't like tegra 3 because it's not that good processor in my opinion
Swyped on my Galaxy Nexus running AOKP with Franco Kernel

This thread is interesting. Brb and will look for that subscribe button.

Xperia S has an Adreno 220, N4 has Adreno 320. Big difference here. I'm pretty sure it stacks up against others just fine.
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Dragooon123 said:
Xperia S has an Adreno 220, N4 has Adreno 320. Big difference here. I'm pretty sure it stacks up against others just fine.
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Adreno320 completely destroys a Tegra3, not even close......
but I don't know about the other chip that was asked about.
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circleofomega said:
Any performance-wise issues with the Adreno? Specifically when it comes HD gaming (I'm talking about NFS Most Wanted, N.O.V.A 3 etc)...
I have one bad example to share with the Adreno.
A friend has Xperia S that has Adreno GPU. NFS MW lags like hell...runs super smooth on my PowerVR...
So...don't you think a Tegra 3 would have been cherry on the icing...
Sent from my RaZr HD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
powervr chips are probably overall the most efficient, powerful and supported. iphone uses powervr gpu's so the compatibility and ports are a lot easier. the adreno 320 seems to be a pretty powerful gpu. tegra3 just isn't there yet. nvidia makes great desktop and mobile pc gpu's but they're still kind of green in the phone market. the tegra3 isn't a slouch but as far as power efficiency and support there are 2 better options.

@rbiter said:
powervr chips are probably overall the most efficient, powerful and supported. iphone uses powervr gpu's so the compatibility and ports are a lot easier. the adreno 320 seems to be a pretty powerful gpu. tegra3 just isn't there yet. nvidia makes great desktop and mobile pc gpu's but they're still kind of green in the phone market. the tegra3 isn't a slouch but as far as power efficiency and support there are 2 better options.
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So, so far powerVR is the strongest..I mean, A320 isn't out yet in any device right...

circleofomega said:
So, so far powerVR is the strongest..I mean, A320 isn't out yet in any device right...
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The adreno 320 is in the quad core s4 chipsets, like the optimus g and nexus 4.
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Tegra is terrible. I know that because I have the atrix.

Capt said:
Tegra is terrible. I know that because I have the atrix.
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Click to collapse
I know, my wife has one too. Even the games made for Tegra lag...LOL!
But then I think the PowerVR will be the only strong contender...

You wan't to know the answer? The poverwr wins

you do know that this thread is like a year old?
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So which one i should choose
circleofomega said:
Any performance-wise issues with the Adreno? Specifically when it comes HD gaming (I'm talking about NFS Most Wanted, N.O.V.A 3 etc)...
I have one bad example to share with the Adreno.
A friend has Xperia S that has Adreno GPU. NFS MW lags like hell...runs super smooth on my PowerVR...
So...don't you think a Tegra 3 would have been cherry on the icing...
Sent from my RaZr HD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which I should choose Powervr sgx544 ,Andreno 220,Tegra 3 or Mali
And what about files for games all the files for this devices will be different or the same

Power VR is probably better as all ios devices have them so games ported from iPhone don't need to be gpu optimised
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Andreno files or any other GPU files doesnt support on my phonr
THEBANDIT420 said:
Power VR is probably better as all ios devices have them so games ported from iPhone don't need to be gpu optimised
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I want to know that I am having device named MICROMAX CANVAS HD A116 ARM7 POWERVR with 1.2 quadcore processor.
what about if I downloaded An Andreno file and installed it on my phone it will run or not.
And which GPU is best ANDRENO,POWERVR ,MALI or TEGRA.
I got this problem many times when I download a modded game from any other site and I download Andreno then after running that game
It shows a message sgx is not found download it from google play store.But they dont have any apk or datafiles for my POWERVR GPU so what can I do.is there any way to convert that apk into another GPU's apk.

What version of android does this phone run as ICS and below allow chainfire 3d app to be installed which had plugins that helped different games work. It also fixed the market settings so you could download them. Loved that app.
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how Good is the GPU of This Phone?

i want to know how good is the GPU of this phone is better than ADRENO 320?

darkhelio said:
i want to know how good is the GPU of this phone is better than ADRENO 320?
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Click to collapse
which version are you referring to? quad 19505 s4 does have adreno 320 but i believe it is slightly overclocked, so it has higher frequency and much better in gaming. As for 19500 s4, it has PowerVR 544mp3. so both of them are good but only optimization can tell whether they can run smoothly or no.

darkhelio said:
i want to know how good is the GPU of this phone is better than ADRENO 320?
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Click to collapse
The PowerVR of the i9500 is pretty much par with the Adreno 320 (overclocked) of the i9505.
Either way, it'll be more than enough to blast through modern cell phone games.

ChronoReverse said:
The PowerVR of the i9500 is pretty much par with the Adreno 320 (overclocked) of the i9505.
Either way, it'll be more than enough to blast through modern cell phone games.
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Click to collapse
Exactly! Just leave this to Samsung since they are the one who will contact game devs to do optimization with Adreno 320 and PowerVR 544mp3 .

mohawk888 said:
Exactly! Just leave this to Samsung since they are the one who will contact game devs to do optimization with Adreno 320 and PowerVR 544mp3 .
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Click to collapse
yes but the ADreno 320 have more future Proof and the VR GPU is more old than the Adreno...

ChronoReverse said:
The PowerVR of the i9500 is pretty much par with the Adreno 320 (overclocked) of the i9505.
Either way, it'll be more than enough to blast through modern cell phone games.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's on par for now because apps are still using opengl ES 2.0. Once apps start using opengl ES 3.0 the powervr is going to be lagging far behind, I am thinking especially about emulators such as dolphin where the move is planned and would allow the emulator to gain almost 10fps on average. Otherwise as far as day to day use goes both gpus act about the same.
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mathieulh said:
It's on par for now because apps are still using opengl ES 2.0. Once apps start using opengl ES 3.0 the powervr is going to be lagging far behind, I am thinking especially about emulators such as dolphin where the move is planned and would allow the emulator to gain almost 10fps on average. Otherwise as far as day to day use goes both gpus act about the same.
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Yes but don't say it too often or you'll get all these monkeys on your back