Samsung Galaxy S III vs. Galaxy S II: Intergalactic

Benchmarks - supercharged performance

Both the Samsung Galaxy S II and S III use Exynos chipsets of the house with Cortex-A9 CPU cores and Mali-400 GPU. The S III has double the CPU cores (which are also clocked slightly higher) and it's clear that the GPU either has more cores or has been overclocked (Samsung doesn't say which one it is).

The Galaxy S III shows a pretty decent increase in single-threaded performance over the S II as revealed by BenchmarkPi, considering the increase in clock speed is only 200MHz.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)
  279
• HTC One S
  306
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  338
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  344
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  351
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  408
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  452
• Sony Xperia S
  536
• HTC Sensation XE
  583

Putting all the cores to work results in a more than double increase in performance for the Galaxy S III - which is what you would expect of a quad-core phone (and with higher CPU clock at that). Not all CPU loads are as nicely multithreaded as Linpack, however, so that's about the maximum speed increase we can expect to see.

Linpack

Higher is better

• HTC One S
  210
• HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)
  196
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  177.1
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  126.1
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  90
• Sony Xperia S
  86.4
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  77.6
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  77.1
• HTC Sensation XE
  50.4

Quadrant highly appreciates the overall performance enhancements that Samsung built into the Galaxy S III, showing a massive advantage for the newer phone.

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5365
• HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)
  5146
• HTC One S
  5047
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  4842
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  3531
• Sony Xperia S
  3173
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  3053
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  2316

NenaMark 2 and GLBenchmark show that the Mali-400 GPUs inside both Galaxies are not the same. NenaMark runs at display resolution - meaning the Galaxy S III has 140% more pixels to work with and it still beats its predecessor (and comes very close to the 60fps sweet spot).

GLBenchmark runs offscreen at 720p resolution - putting both phones on equal footing. The benchmark shows a 62% performance increase, but again, it's not clear if it's more cores or higher clock speed (or both) that causes it.

Still, the Galaxy S II turns up very playable framerates, so even if the graphics on its screen won't be as sharp as on the S III, it's still a good portable gaming machine (on par with NVIDIA's GPU inside the Tegra 3, assuming equal resolution).

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

• HTC One S
  60.5
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  58.8
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  51.6
• HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)
  49.1
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  47.5
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  43.6
• Sony Xperia S
  37.5
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  24
• HTC Sensation XE
  23

GLBenchmark Egypt (offscreen 720p)

Higher is better

• New Apple iPad
  140
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  103
• Apple iPad 2
  90
• Apple iPhone 4S
  73
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  63
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  62
• HTC One S
  56
• HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)
  55.7

Finally, there are the browser benchmarks. The Galaxy S III is a speed freak, but the S II holds its ground. It's still one of the highest scoring phones in SunSpider and BrowserMark alike. You're unlikely to notice major differences in browsing speed on either phone (but the extra sharp screen on the S III sure is nice).

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1447
• HTC One S
  1708
• New Apple iPad
  1722
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  1757
• HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)
  1834
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  1849
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  1863
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  1891
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2217
• Sony Xperia S
  2587
• HTC Sensation XE
  4404

BrowserMark

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  169811
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  113256
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  111853
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  103591
• New Apple iPad
  103264
• HTC One S
  98435
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  96803
• HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)
  92232
• Apple iPhone 4S
  88725
• Sony Xperia S
  74990
• HTC Sensation XE
  72498