Do you realize that there’s no such thing as a performance or gaming processor for smartphones? Just hear me out, let’s spend some paragraphs dismantling performance and gaming SoC myths tonight. These smartphone myths or old wives tales have somehow persisted till today, even though the smartphone world has left them behind.
These old things are still running free out in the wild and lots of people are still being told that they’re a thing. There are still many people who believe that there are SoCs that are specifically tailored for gaming and others that are tailored performance, or cameras or battery life etc. I’m here to spoil all that.
Dismantling performance and gaming SoC myths
So a bit of background first before I attack the main topic and this of course starts with MediaTek.
I mean of course, why not? If not MediaTek, then who? When you’re a smaller Taiwanese company that’s fighting against a bigger American giant, you’ll have to innovate and pull out all the stops just to keep the public’s attention.
That American giant is Qualcomm Snapdragon. See back then, Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm were in a three way fight for who had the world’s best SoC.
MediaTek of course couldn’t compete so it had to find a way to get eyes on its products. They did this by cleverly segmenting its product line into 3 sections (4 if you count the ill-fated Helio X series).
These sections are
- Helio A for the entry level
- Helio P for the performance chips
- Helio G for the gaming chips
- Helio X was for the flagship level but it crashed and burned
If you noticed only the A series is clearly designated as entry level, the other series were just named thus and left like that.
The Performance Myth
The first myth we are going to tackle is the Performance SoC myth.
Believe it or not, there are people who are still looking for “performance” SoCs. “I am looking for an SoC or phone that can do heavy duty tasks and my phone will not be slow”. That designation doesn’t exist anymore.
In fact, I’d call it a scam. This is because Helio P series were just a bunch of SoCs that were faster than MediaTek’s old lineup of the 6580, 6737, 6739, 6750 etc. They were also better than most of Unisoc’s offerings as well. That was it.
In truth, these were normal entry level, budget and lower mid-range SoCs that just ran slightly faster than their predecessors and some of the competition. They were nothing special.
Some companies that I know, abused the hell out of the Helio P22 and P35, marketing the former as a high performing Midrange SoC and the latter as a budget flagship. Those were fun times 😂😂😂.
The Gaming Myth
However, Qualcomm as usual soon caught up to MediaTek’s shenanigans and after 2019 started adding G to their SoCs to attract the mobile gaming community. SoCs like the Snapdragon 730G was one of the first and then we later had 750G, 765G, 720G, 778G and so on…
MediaTek not to be left out quickly pivoted as well, dumping the P series and rebranding to the G series. G for gaming.
In Qualcomm’s original plan, their SoCs were to have two versions. For example, we have the regular SD730 and the overclocked SD730G. Both SoCs are identical in all aspects. The only difference is that the 730G had it’s GPU overclocked. MediaTek had no such plan.
Because what’s the point of having a P series and G series run concurrently? All SoCs can and will play games. If you have a beefed up P line and a beefed up G line, you’re basically wasting your time because the P line will play games just as well as the G line. So MediaTek abandoned the P line and started cranking out G series chips.
The Present
The 5G era soon took hold and it became the main focus of the public and gaming started to wane as a selling point. I mean it had to.
All SoCs can play games. So the point of a dedicated gaming SoCs at the budget level was nothing other than a cheap gimmick to sell SoCs and subsequently smartphones.
Both companies have since dumped this gimmick and have rebranded. MediaTek rebranded to Dimensity and Qualcomm changed its entire naming scheme.
Meanwhile here, there are still people here who are fighting each other that Helio G99 is a gaming SoC and that it plays games better than some Snapdragon SoCs because those ones do not have G in their name.
The people who made these SoCs have moved on to Dimensity 6000, 7000, 8000 and 9000 series. But there are still people arguing for the existence of gaming SoCs and holding up the G series as a good example.
Conclusion
There are no “performance” or “gaming” SoCs anymore. That’s all in the past now. If you want an SoC that performs at a fairly high level and handles games well, you should be looking at an upper Midrange SoC.
Somewhere around the SD 4 Gen 2, SD 6s Gen 3, SD 7s Gen 2, Dimensity 7020, 7050, 7300 etc.
You should be eyeing those ones at least if you really want to enjoy a fairly high level of performance. You can also go after old flagships or newer flagship killers from the last 2 years.
If you’re not interested in high performance then lower mid-range SoCs like the G95-G99, SD720G-695, etc all the way down to Helio G85 and SD680 should do just fine.
I hope you can see why we have spend time dismantling performance and gaming SoC myths, especially in a world where people are easily fooled by marketing. That’s it. Feel free to check out other articles on the site.
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