MT6793 vs. Snapdragon 810; which SoC is better for smartphones?

MediaTek’s official twitter page

After the release of MT6795, Taiwanese fabless semiconductor manufacturing company MediaTek has released a lesser performing SoC called MT6793 in order to take on the flagship chipset belonging to Qualcomm, Snapdragon 810. Currently, all that is known about MT6793 is that it features an octa-core processor running at 2.3 GHz.

With a processor running at such a high clock speed, it can be assumed that the cores belong to none other than Cortex-A53. If Cortex-A57 is able to run at the aforementioned frequency, then it would consume a ridiculous amount of battery, which is an attribute that does not benefit smartphone users in any fashion. MT6795 is a much better performing chipset as compared to MT6793, due to the fact that it features four cores belonging to Cortex-A57 and the remaining four belonging to the Cortex-A53.

According to GizChina, all cores of MT6795 are running at 2.2 GHz, which is the only reason why this particular mobile chipset performs far better compared to Snapdragon 810. As for MT6793, it is possible that the SoC is able to slip past Snapdragon 810, but only because Qualcomm's flagship product is plagued with overheating and thermal throttling issues.

With a small amount of space to dissipate the heat in the smartphone, Snapdragon 810's processor automatically downclocks in order to prevent irreversible damage to the battery and other components. Under this scenario, Snapdragon 810 is unable to deliver long-term performance, which is the exact opposite case when MT6793 is concerned.

The 2.3 GHz frequency will come in handy when both low-end and taxing operations are being carried out. Since there have been no reports of overheating and thermal throttling on MT6793, it will be able to sustain its performance for a much longer period compared to Snapdragon 810, which will result in an automatic win for MediaTek's chipset.

With Helio X20 rolling out in the coming months, Qualcomm will be looking to take the fight to the 10-core processor with its Snapdragon 820.