Android and Me

Tegra 2 CPU and GPU benchmarks, Motorola Atrix 4G vs LG Optimus 2X
Sam’s Club prices WiFI-only Motorola XOOM at $539
Motorola shaves $100 off the price of the Xoom with new coupon

Tegra 2 CPU and GPU benchmarks, Motorola Atrix 4G vs LG Optimus 2X

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 10:17 AM PST

The first dual-core Android phone has finally hit the market and more are on the way. NVIDIA promised big performance gains with their Tegra 2 system-on-a-chip (SoC), so we put two of their superphones through a series of benchmarks to see how they stacked up. Check out the results after the jump and then download the benchmarks to see how your Android phone compares.

The test lineup

We have a lot of phones laying around the A&M Labs, but we just went with six models for this round of testing. Devices we tested include both the Tegra 2 phones that are currently available (Atrix 4G and Optimus 2X), both phones with Android 2.3 (Nexus S and Nexus One), the T-Mobile G2, and the popular Motorola Droid.

Each device was given a clean reboot before testing and they are all running unmodified, stock versions of Android. An active WiFi connection was turned on to simulate real-world experience.

Neocore

About: Neocore is an OpenGL-ES 1.1 graphics performance benchmark for Android devices. It shows off some of the techniques that are possible on accelerated platforms such as 1-pass light maps and bump mapping. [Download]

Neocore is one of the oldest GPU benchmarks and measures OpenGL ES 1.1 performance. The LG Optimus 2X easily came out on top with a score of 77.2 frames per second. The Motorola Atrix 4G fell behind in this test because it has the highest resolution (960 x540), which means it has to process the most pixels and do more work.

Nenamark1

About: Set your GPU on fire with NenaMark, an OpenGL ES 2.0 benchmark! NenaMark is a benchmark/demo of OpenGL ES 2.0, using programmable shaders for graphical effects such as reflections, dynamic shadows, parametric surfaces, particles and different light models to push the GPU to its limits. [Download]

Nenamark1 is another popular benchmark that has been around awhile which measures OpenGL ES 2.0 performance. The Optimus 2X once again smokes the competition and is followed by the Nexus S.

Smartbench 2011

About: Smartbench 2011 is a multi-core friendly benchmark application that measures the overall performance of your smartphone. It reports both Productivity and Games Index to suit both productivity users and 3D gaming users. [Download]

Smartbench 2011 is a new benchmark that has been updated to be multi-core friendly. Note that the Tegra 2 offers about 3x the productivity performance over all the single core phones. In the games score, the Optimus 2X is once again the leader.

GLBenchmark 2.0.3

About: GLBenchmark 2.0 has been designed from the ground up to demonstrate and measure the true potential of OpenGL ES 2.0 Hardware. The built-in shader code (GLSL) generator enables real-time performance tuning and de-compositing. This is an in-valuable feature for OpenGL ES 2.0 Hardware vendors and Handset manufacturers. [Download]

No surprises here. The Optimus 2X leads the competition when it comes to GPU performance. The Nexus S is able to once again eclipse the Atrix 4G thanks to its lower display resolution.

Linpack

About: Speed test your Android device and ROM with this standard CPU benchmark. Check the speed of your Android device and compare it to other Android devices. Results in millions of floating point operations per second (MFLOPS). Save results or post to the website to beat the best times. [Download]

In Linpack we see no performance advantages for the Tegra 2 devices. This test does not appear to be multi-threaded and all the 1 GHz cores perform about the same. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips generally perform well in this test thanks to their FPU (SIMD/NEON/VFP) instructions. The real world performance between a G2 and Nexus S is pretty similar, so I’m not sure how relevant this test really is.

Sunspider Javascript 0.9.1

About: This benchmark tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs. It is designed to compare different versions of the same browser, and different browsers to each other. This test mostly avoids microbenchmarks, and tries to focus on the kinds of actual problems developers solve with JavaScript today, and the problems they may want to tackle in the future as the language gets faster. This includes tests to generate a tagcloud from JSON input, a 3D raytracer, cryptography tests, code decompression, and many more examples. [Download]

Both the Tegra 2 devices lead the pack in Javascript performance.

Conclusions

Benchmarks are not the end-all, be-all of real-world performance, but they can help us measure how different platforms stack up. It is really hard to provide an apples-to-apples comparison of the GPU performance since there are so many different display resolutions, but we can see that the GeForce GPU inside the Tegra 2 offers the fastest performance for what’s currently available on the market.

In the couple of weeks that I have spent with both Tegra 2 phones, I can say they generally feel much faster than the single-core competition. Not many apps are optimized to take full advantage of multi-core processors, but there is definitely a noticeable difference in the overall responsiveness of Tegra 2 devices when multiple apps are running.

Even though the LG Optimus 2X has half the RAM of the Atrix 4G, it easily out-performs the competition in GPU benchmarks thanks to its lower resolution. The qHD resolution of the Atrix 4G is a nice spec to have, but there is a performance hit in most games since the GPU has to do more.

We can clearly see the performance gains of Tegra 2 in benchmarks that are multi-threaded like Smartbench 2011. This should be a good indication of what Tegra users can expect in the future as the Android OS and applications are optimized to take full advantage of dual-core processors.

For everyday use, the Nexus S can still hold its own against newer dual-core phones. I expect the Nexus S will continue to be competitive for the rest of 2011 thanks to it always having the latest version of Android. Look for Tegra 2 (and other dual-core CPUs) to take the lead in the second half of this year as the software catches up to the hardware.

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Sam’s Club prices WiFI-only Motorola XOOM at $539

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 08:35 AM PST

If the $800 Motorola XOOM from Verizon sounds a bit steep, you might want to reconsider what you really need. If you really don't want a 3G/4G equipped Android tablet or don't want to pay for an extra data plan, you might be interested in knowing that Sam's Club may have plans to offer the WiFi-only version of the Motorola XOOM for a mere $539.

For anyone wondering how the price compares to the new iPad 2, its $60 cheaper than the 32 GB model. We still have no clue as to when Motorola plans on rolling out the WiFi-only Motorola XOOM, but since a handful of European e-tailors are claiming an early April release we don't see any reason why the U.S. launch would be any later.

From what we can tell, most people's main complaint about the XOOM and most other Android tablets has been the price. If Motorola does manage to bring the WiFi only tablet to market for less than $550, would any of you non-tablet enthusiast reconsider your position?

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Motorola shaves $100 off the price of the Xoom with new coupon

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 08:43 PM PST

It may be a little early for an actual price cut, but Motorola has seen fit to offer potential Xoom customers a $100 discount via a new coupon code.

I don’t know how long this particular deal is going to last so if you are interested you should probably get in on it as soon as possible. Just make your way to the Motorola Store and enter the code MOTOXOOM when you get to the checkout page and be sure to select 2-day shipping as that is free for the taking.

At $699 the Xoom, which is already more than a match for the iPad 2 by the specs, would take a slight lead in pricing as well so hopefully Motorola makes this a permanent price cut sooner rather than later.

If you have no interest in the 3G/4G then you are probably going to want to keep holding out for that sub-$600 wifi-only Xoom, but if not this is a good deal for early adopters.

Update: Sorry if you missed out, but the deal is dead. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for any new deals and if you happen to find any go ahead give us a shout.

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