Motorola Atrix 4G review: Enter the Atrix

Synthetic Benchmarks: NVIDIA Tegra 2 performance

The Motorola Atrix 4G is the second TEGRA 2 phone to come to our office. It offers double the RAM of the LG Optimus 2X so it should, in theory, be faster.

The Samsung Galaxy S II is another dual-core phone, which we’ve had the pleasure to test, but it’s processor was only clocked at 1GHz as opposed to the 1.2GHz that the retail version will have. Initial hands-on reports suggest that the clock increase provides a performance yield of additional 25% in synthetic benchmarks.

Also the Atrix 4G offers a resolution of 540x960 resolution, while the Optimus 2X and Galaxy S II both have 480x800 screens. Fewer pixels on the screen require less processing power, so hence they should have a slight upper hand.

Synthetic benchmarks are far from the real deal. And whatever hardware your device is using, the software implemented inside is important too. The Galaxy S II is the only contender here, using the latest Android 2.3.1 Gingerbread, the Atrix 4G and Optimus 2X are still stuck on version 2.2.1 Froyo.

Having a dual-core chip and double the amount of RAM does make a difference in day-to-day usage. There’s no slowing down or lagging even as the system starts piling up with active applications; battery management is hopefully better too.

Now with all those things in mind lets move on to the benchmarks.

The Atrix 4G did exceptionally well on Quadrant with 2751 point, which is higher than both 1GHz Galaxy S II and the LG Optimus 2X.

Atrix 4G • Optimus 2X • Galaxy S II

At Linpack the Atrix 4G outdid the Optimus 2X slightly but fell short of the 1GHz Galaxy S II.

Atrix 4G • Optimus 2X • Galaxy S II

At BenchmarkPi the Atrix 4G is in second place, followed by the Galaxy S II at third, while the Optimus 2X is first.

Atrix 4G • Optimus 2X • Galaxy S II

Finally, at Neocore the LG Optimus 2X wins by a large margin over the Galaxy S II and the Atrix 4G is in last position. Now we've talked about this before – the Galaxy S II probably has some artificial cap here (none of its results went over 60 fps).

Atrix 4G • Optimus 2X • Galaxy S II

Motorola Atrix 4G has the exact same GPU chip as the Optimus 2X. But with the higher resolution of its display, it can’t compete with its Tegra 2-powered competitor.

Finally, we tested the Motorola Atrix 4G with Smartbench and it did well. It outperformed the bigger Xoom tablet by a slight margin. The Atrix 4G fell a little short of the Samsung Galaxy S II in terms of productivity, but was able to beat it on the games index.

Smartbench 2011

Now all of these synthetic benchmarks aside, the Atrix 4G performs great and is blazing fast, as you might expect. So you shouldn’t throw all your attention on these numbers above as they only represent the statistical side of things.

In real life the Motorola Atrix 4G ran smooth and buttery throughout most tasks, we’d throw at it. And no matter whether it’s the best, second best or somewhere in the middle of the most powerful devices out there in terms of benchmarks – the Atrix 4G feels high-end and doesn’t disappoint.