Snapdragon 888 vs Exynos 2100 Comparison: Which One is Better?

On December 2, Qualcomm unveiled its latest premium chipset, Snapdragon 888. Now, Samsung has announced its next-generation mobile processor, Exynos 2100. Snapdragon 888 chipset powers 2021’s flagship devices such as Xiaomi Mi 11, Galaxy S21 etc. On the other hand, we will likely see Exynos 2100 with the Indian version of the Galaxy S21. As techno enthusiasts, we all are curious about how these new flagships compare against each other. So, without wasting too much time, let’s get straight to the point.

Snapdragon 888 vs Exynos 2100

CPU

The new flagship SoC from Qualcomm is made on a 5nm processing node. Like earlier, Snapdragon 865, this time also Snapdragon 888 packs with 8-cores. Snapdragon 888 comes in a tri-cluster configuration: 1x Cortex X1 at 2.84 GHz, 3x Cortex A78 at 2.42 GHz, and 4x Cortex A55 at 1.8 GHz. So, if we look closely at the clock speeds, it looks the same as last year’s Snapdragon 865, but the highlight of this year is the first Cortex X1 core, which makes all the difference this year. ARM claims their new X1 core is 23 percent faster than their A78 cores.

On the other hand, Samsung’s new Exynos 2100 is also made on the 5nm processing node. This year, Samsung has not used their custom Mongoose architecture for the Exynos 2100, which we guess is good news for Samsung fans who are furious about the performance difference between the Snapdragon 865 and Exynos 990. Exynos 2100 is an 8-core SoC with a tri-cluster configuration like Snapdragon 888. The configuration is 1x Cortex X1 at 2.91 GHz, 3x Cortex A78 at 2.81, and 4x Cortex A55 at 2.21 GHz.

So, looking at the CPU frequencies, we can expect this time, Exynos 2100 will give almost the same or better performance compared to Snapdragon 888.

GPU

As far as GPU is concerned, the Snapdragon 888 comes with an Adreno 660 GPU. On the other hand, Exynos 2100 packs with Mali-G78 MP14 (14 cores). At present, there is no information regarding the GPU clock speeds. However, it looks like Qualcomm’s 888 SoC has a GPU advantage.

AI Engine

Exynos 2100 has triple-core NPU, which offers up to 26 trillion operations per second (TOPS). With Snadrogn 888, we see Hexagon 780 can also provide 26 TOPS. So, both are tied into the AI section.

Camera

Snapdragon 888’s Spectra 580 comes with support for 200MP cameras. It has 8K video recording at 30 FPS and 4K HDR recording with computational HDR. On the other hand, the unknown ISP in the Exynos 2100 also supports 200MP cameras. Other features include 4K video recording at 120FPS and 8K video playback at 60FPS. So, clearly, we can say Qualcomm’s chip packs a better ISP.

Benchmark

Talking about the Geekbench v5 benchmark test, Xiaomi Mi 11 with Snapdragon 888 scored 1105 points in the single-core test and 3512 points in the multi-core test. On the other hand, the Exynos 2100-powered Galaxy S21 Plus phone has achieved 1038 points in the single-core test and 3060 points in the multi-core test.

We can see the Exynos 2100 is almost tied with the Snapdragon 888 in terms of the single-core test. However, in the multi-core test, Snapdragon 888 is better than Exynos 2100 as the scores are over 450 points higher (+15%).

Specifications Table

SoC	Snapdragon 888	Exynos 2100
CPU	1 x Cortex-X1 at 2.84GHz 3 x Cortex-A78 at 2.42GHz 4 x Cortex-A55 at 1.80GHz	1 x Cortex-X1 at 2.9GHz 3 x Cortex-A78 at 2.8GHz 4 x Cortex-A55 at 2.2GHz
GPU	Adreno 660	Mali-G78 MP14
Node	5nm LPE EUV	5nm LPE EUV
ISP	Spectra 580 Single camera up to 200MP Dual-camera Upto 64MP	Unknown Single camera up to 200MP Dual-camera 32MP+32MP
Display	Max On-Device: 4K at 60Hz QHD+ at 144Hz	Max On-Device: 4K at 60Hz QHD+ at 144Hz
AI	Hexagon 780 26 TOPS	Unknown 26 TOPS