OPPO's Reno3 5G vs Reno3 Pro vs Reno3 Pro 5G: Why Don't We See More MediaTek Dimensity 1000 Phones?
by Andrei Frumusanu on August 10, 2020 10:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
Whilst the controlled performance tests are heavily favouring the Dimensity 1000L powered Reno3 5G, what also matters in user experience in daily usage is the overall system performance, including the device’s software stack and the SoC’s scheduler settings. In that regard, we’ve haven’t really tested a MediaTek device in several years now.
In PCMark’s web browsing test, none of the Reno3 phones showcase very convincing results as we’re seeing scores well below the average flagship device today – but that’s to be expected given these phones are targeted at the mid-range.
The writing test is a more representative workload for daily user experiences. Here both the D1000L and S765 Reno3 phones performs in line with their mid-range nature and perform extremely close to each other. The Helio P90 based global Reno3 Pro doesn’t fare well at all here as it’s a clear tier below other phones.
In the photo editing test which makes use of Renderscript and loads the GPU, the MediaTek Reno3 5G is ahead of its P95 sibling as well as the Snapdragon 765 counterpart.
In the data-manipulation score, the Reno3 phones are all performing close to each other.
In the overall PCMark scores, we achieve the expected hierarchy between the devices, although the absolute score differences are quite smaller than we would have imagined.
In the web-browser based JavaScript benchmarks, we’re seeing the Snapdragon 765 notably outperform the Dimensity 1000L chipset which oddly enough falls behind by quite a bit. I’m not too sure of why this would be, but it’s possible that these heavier workloads are more memory-bound and thus Qualcomm’s superior memory latency performance is helping it pull ahead of the MediaTek chipsets.
As we hadn’t measured a MediaTek chipset in quite a few years, I was curious as to how their scheduler performs in relation to what we know of other SoCs such as from Qualcomm, HiSilicon, Samsung or even Apple. We’re using our internal workload performance ramp test for this task:
Surprisingly, MediaTek’s Dimensity 1000L performed massively better than any other SoC on the market, scaling up from idle to maximum frequency on the performance cores in just 4.2ms. The Snapdragon 765 Reno3 Pro 5G here took a more conventional stepped ramp-up approach, reaching the maximum performance state in 78ms.
I was quite astounded to see such an aggressive scheduler behaviour on the MediaTek chipset – it seems their scheduler will wake up tasks at maximum frequency very quickly and ramp down from there, instead of ramping up performance gradually. It’s a big difference, and it’s seemingly a lot more aggressive than any other SoC on the market.
I’m still not sure how this translates into more natural workloads with intermediate load behaviours – both the Reno3 5G and Reno3 Pro 5G both performed quite similarly in subjective device usages, with the MediaTek variant only pulling ahead under more notable workloads such as installing applications.
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Fritzkier - Thursday, August 13, 2020 - link
Realme X was already discontinued since months ago.Realme releases phones like someone with diarrhea, and only produce it for 6 months at most. Even here, where Realme ranks 4th of smartphone market share, Realme X is nowhere to found.
PeachNCream - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
It would be nice to see more non-Qualcomm phone SoCs out there. In particular just because of the recent Qualcomm DSP vulnerabilities that may never get patched on poorly or not updated phones. Qualcomm has released fixes, but we know all too well how bad things are in a world of disposable handsets.https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252487274/Qual...
Other SoC options may somewhat help prevent these from getting too widespread. Then again, some form of better update deployment would help a lot more and I'm not sure that will ever happen because it probably needs to be done by Google and be baked into Android rather than the fragmented manner its left in now and that has all sorts of implications plus logistical considerations akin to and potentially worse than those that Microsoft faces with PC patches.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
You REALLY think that a chinese mediatek chip is going to be more secure then a qualcomm chip? How many vulnerabilities on Mediatek chips have either not been disclosed or never found in the first place because they dont care about older chips?Android security is also not the big scary monster man people make it out to be. Android is relatively locked down in terms of installing software compared to a PC. 99% of android problems are misbehaving facebook installations or people not understanding how to empty their storage correctly.
PeachNCream - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
Sorry, I'm not getting into the anti China racism rhetoric with you. We see enough of that from Duck Trampoline's press briefings.Fritzkier - Thursday, August 13, 2020 - link
He mention that Mediatek are Chinese. Apparently he don't know the difference between Taiwan and Mainland China.NitinYadav251096 - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
I agree with you. But it's time now to bring the MediaTek 5G chipsets in the Indian market and they can do quite well.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
"Why dont we see more Mediatek"? Well two reasons.1.) Mediatek phones do not support CDMA, so they are a no go in the USA.
2.) Mediatek has a well earned reputation for producing some unspeakably horiffic chipsets. 'unable to run correctly at stock speeds' level terrible. Most brands tend to avoid cheap garbage. Even if Mediatek has straightened out their designs, it will take years before companies trust them enough to use their chips in any halfway expensive phones.
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
1) They support CDMA and have had for years.https://www.mediatek.com/news-events/press-release...
https://www.mediatek.com/news-events/press-release...
2) I haven't seen evidence of this. The only times they had issues is when everybody else had issues as well (20nm, so on).
patel21 - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
Combination of Huawei Phones with Mediatek Chipsets is indeed a Synergetic relationship that could give Qualcomm the competition it needs by making Mediatek relevant again.Quantumz0d - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
GNU GPL v2 violator, these phones do not get proper updates and use that Chinese OSes on top. OnePlus had a breach again in 2020 for loss of customer data. Cannot run a Custom ROM on these devices.This MediaTek is trash since start and It has to stay like that unless they open up.