Snapdragon 888 vs Exynos 2100 – Battle of Performance

Every year, Samsung usually releases their flagship smartphones in two versions. One is powered by Qualcomm’s top-end processor and another with an in-house Exynos chip under the hood.

Exynos 2100 and Snapdragon 888, both the chipsets are designed for flagship smartphones and are manufactured to deliver tremendous performance. Among them, Exynos 2100 was recently launched while Snapdragon 888 was revealed last year, back in December.

If you look at top-end flagship processors or SoC’s, the two best offerings are Snapdragon 888, Exynos 2100.

Let’s see which chipset can get the title of best flagship processor.

CPU:-

The Snapdragon 888 SoC is based on 5nm architecture, 64-bit octa-core processor that based on Arm Cortex X1 Prime core clocked at 2.84GHz, Arm Cortex A78 clocked at 2.4 GHz (3x performance) and Arm Cortex A55 efficiency cores with a base frequency of 1.8GHz (4x efficiency). The kryo 680 CPU gives 25% boost in overall CPU performance.

Exynos 2100 is a 64-bit octa-core processor and is based on 5nm technology. The processor comes with all-new Arm Cortex X1 Prime core clocked at 2.9GHz, Arm Cortex A78 clocked at 2.3 GHz (3x performance) and Arm Cortex A55 efficiency cores with a base frequency of 2.2GHz (4x efficiency). The processor improves single-core performance by up to 19% and multi-core performance by up to 33%.

According to on-paper specs, Exynos 2100 is slightly better than Snapdragon 888.

GPU:-

Snapdragon 888 is featured with Adreno 660 GPU which can render graphics 35% faster than previous generations & is armed with Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming arsenal. Snapdragon 888 brings Variable Rate Shading (VRS) which improves the game rendering process by up to 30%. Thus making the gameplay ultra-smooth at the highest HDR quality graphics.

Exynos 2100 comes with ARM MALI G78 MP14 GPU. The GPU can reportedly offer more than 40% boost in graphics performance. Thanks to a new tri-core NPU (Neutral Processor Unit) architecture. The Exynos 2100 offers a significant boost in AI capabilities and reaches 26 TOPS. This allows up to 20% lower power consumption or 10% higher overall performance.

RAM and Storage:-

Snapdragon 888 can support upto 16GB of RAM and talking about its speed, it can prop-up upto 2133 MHz LPDDR5 and 2750 MHz LPDDR4X type RAM, which gives speedy system performance. Coming to the storage, it supports EMMC 5.1, UFS 2.1, UFS 2.2, UFS 3.0 and UFS 3.1.

Whereas, Exynos 2100 also supports upto 16GB of RAM (same as SD888) and talking about its speed, it can prop-up upto 2750 MHz LPDDR5 and 2133 MHz LPDDR4X type RAM, which gives speedy system performance. Coming to the storage, it supports EMMC 5.1, UFS 2.1, 2.2 & 3.1.

So in this section, both the processors are quite similar.

Camera:-

Snapdragon 888 supports a single camera upto 200 Megapixel, 32 + 32 Megapixel dual-camera configuration and 28 Megapixel MFNR, ZSL at 30fps. For Image Signal Processor (ISP), This processor uses Qualcomm Spectra™ 580 image signal processor, Triple 14-bit CV-ISPs, Hardware accelerator for computer vision (CV-ISP).

The new Image Signal Processor (ISP) on the Exynos 2100 supports single camera with sensor up to 200 MP and Dual-camera upto 32MP+32MP. The Multi-camera and Frame Processor (MCFP) can fuse image data from multiple cameras for better quality zoom and ultra-wide shots. The NPU is used to analyze the scene, detect faces and objects so that it can pick the optimal settings..

Video:-

In terms of video, Snapdragon 888 supports 4K HDR video with Computational HD, 8K video recording at 30fps. It also supports Dolby Vision, H.265 (HEVC), HDR10+, HLG, HDR10, H.264 (AVC), VP8, VP9 codec’s. Slo-Mo Video Capture supports upto 720p @ 960 FPS. Color depth video capture is upto 10-bit.

While Exynos 2100 supports 4K UHD video at 120fps & 8K UHD video recording at 60fps. It also supports Dolby Vision, H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1 codec’s (similar to sd88). Slo-Mo Video Capture supports upto 720p @ 960 FPS. Color depth video capture upto 10-bit.

So in this section, both the processors are quite similar.

Display:-

Snapdragon 888 has upgraded to 4K display at 60HZ refresh rate (2160×3840p), QHD+ display at 144HZ (1440×3360p) and also supports HDR, HDR10, HDR10+, and color depth upto 10-bit.

Exynos 2100 supports 4K display at 120HZ refresh rate (2160×3840p), QHD+ display at 144HZ (1440×3360p). It also supports H.264, H.265 and color depth upto 10-bit.

In this department, Dragon takes the lead

LTE MODEM:-

Snapdragon 888 chipset has support for Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), mmWave(2×2 MIMO) and Sub-6GHz(200 MHz bandwidth) it uses Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X60 5G Modem-RF System. The maximum upload speed reaches upto 3 GBPS and maximum download speed reaches upto 7.5 GBPS.

Exynos 2100 chipset has support for Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), mmWave spectrums from 2G GSM/CDMA, 3G WCDMA and 4G LTE and Sub-6GHz(100 MHz bandwidth). However. the maximum upload speed reaches upto 3.67 Gbps(5G), 422Mbps(LTE) and maximum download speed reaches upto 7.3 Gbps(5G), 3 Gbps(LTE).

Here, Snapdragon has better download speeds whereas Exynos has better upload speeds.

List of Phones:-

Snapdragon 888:-

• Xiaomi Mi 11
• iQOO 7
• Vivo X60 Pro+
• Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro
• Oppo Find X3
• Samsung Galaxy S21 and S21+ (only in USA and CHINA).

Exynos 2100:-

• Samsung S21 and S21+

Though in terms of performance Snapdragon 888 performs slightly better than Exynos 2100 resulting on-paper specs of Exynos were just on-paper. However, it also depends on smartphone vendors, how well they can optimize these chipsets for their phones.