Exynos vs Allwinner vs Mediatek vs Rockchip vs Action vs Tegra vs Freescale

                          Quadcore Battle

Today I am going to compare the performance of these  chipsets by pitting them against each other.

Basic introduction .

Exynos4412  by Samsung uses 4 cortex a9 cores and features Mali 400mp4 quad-core gpu by arm.
Tegra3 by Nvidia features 4 cortex a9 cores and 12 core ultra low power geforce GPU.
Alwinner a31 by all-winner technology China features 4 cortex a7 cores and dual core power vr sgx544mp GPU.
Mediatek MTK series chipsets by Mediatec inc China features quad-core cortex a7 CPU and a quad-core overclocked Power vr sgx544mp GPU.
Actions ATM7029 by actions semiconductors featuring quadcore cortex a5 and vivante GC1000 GPU.
Rockchip RK3188 by Rockchip semiconductors China featuring quadcore cortex a9 cpu and quad core overclocked mali300mp4 GPU.
Freescale imx6Quad by Freescale featuring quadcore cortex a9 CPU and vivante GC2000 GPU.

Comparison: Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A9

In 2011, Cortex-A7 was introduced by ARM, and that is four years after Cortex-A9. When compared with Cortex-A9, Cortex-A7 design does have some improvements, as listed on ARM official website:

• Lower L2 latencies (10 cycles)
• Improved OS support for L2 maintenance due to simplified software control
• Designed with a low power approach
• Improved branch prediction
• Improved memory system performance
• 64b Load Store path, improves integer and NEON performance
• 128b AMBA 4 buses improve bandwidth
• Increased TLB size (256 entry, up from 128 entry for Cortex-A9 and Cortex A5)
• Increased performance for large workloads like web browsing
• Seamlessly compatible with Cortex-A15 (big.LITTLE)

In ARM Cortex-A7, ARM transforms its design principle from improving the system performance by increasing frequency, to MPCore architecture that could bring improvements in performance, and at the same time, optimize the high power consumption and heat caused by high frequency of Cortex-A9.

	Allwinner A31	Rockchip RK3188	Actions ATM7029	Freescale i.MX6Quad	NVIDIA Tegra3	Samsung Exynos 4412	MediaTek MT6589
CPU	A7×4 (1.2 GHz)	A9×4 (1.8 GHz)	A5×4 (1.3 GHz)	A9×4 (1.5 GHz)	A9×4 (1.2–1.7 GHz)	A9×4 (1.4–1.6 GHz)	A7×4 (1.2 GHz)
Processes	40 nm	28 nm	40 nm	40 nm	40 nm	32 nm	28 nm
Cache	1MB L2	512KB L2	?	1MB L2	1MB L2	1MB L2	1MB L2
GPU	SGX544 MP2 355 MHz	Mali400 MP4 533 MHz	Vivante GC1000	Vivante GC2000	ULP Geforce 416–520 MHz	Mali400 MP4 400 MHz	SGX544 MP 300–384 MHz
Polygon Ability	110M/s	58,6M/s	?	?	120M/s	44M/s	55M/s
Pixel Ability	3000M/s	2133M/s	600 – 800M/s	?	1600M/s	1600M/s	1600M/s
RAM	2CH 64bits	?	?	1CH 64bits	1CH 32bits	2CH 64bits	?
NAND	2CH 16bits	2CH 16bits	60bit ECC	?	1CH 8bits	1CH 8bits	?
Price	$20-	?	$8	?	$20+	$20+	$20-
Raw performance (kDMIPS)	9.1	18	9.4	15	12-17	14-16	9.1

From the above one can infer ranking as follows
1.Rockchip RK3188
2.Exynos 4412
3.Allwinner A31
4.Nvidia Tegra3
5.Freescale iMX6 Quad
6.Mediatek MT6589
7.Actions ATM7029


If you want to buy a cheap quadcore tablet I recommend Exynos or rockchip but not Alwinner. Though Alwinner has a better GPU performance it's cpu performance is pretty weak due to low clock-speed also its 40nm manufacturing process contributes to weak performance.