The Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime is based on a Snapdragon 410 chipset - that's the entry-level 64-bit chipset from Qualcomm, though in 32-bit land it will be positioned in the upped mid-range. The phone runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat at the moment, a 32-bit OS, so the Grand Prime won't see the benefits of 64-bits until (if?) 5.0 Lollipop arrives.
Still, Qualcomm says that the Cortex-A53 processor outperforms Cortex-A7 and this phone has four of them clocked at 1.2GHz. There's also Adreno 306, which offers power savings instead of performance improvements over the GPU it replaces, the 305.
Starting off with Geekbench 3 we do see some improvement over the old generation processor - both the Galaxy Grand Prime and HTC Desire 510 use the A53, while the Moto G (2014) has four A7 cores at 1.2GHz and also ran Android 4.4.4 when we did the test.
Higher is better
Basemark OS II shows a decent improvement in single-core performance for Cortex-A53 over A7, but as the Gionee Elife S5.1 shows clockspeed is more important (it's powered by Cortex-A7 at 1.7GHz). It's worth noting that neither Basemark OS II nor Basemark X detected any benchmark cheating.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
AnTuTu 5 gives the Galaxy Grand Prime an edge in overall performance over the Moto G and puts it on equal ground as the Desire 510 (which uses the same chipset, so no surprise here).
Higher is better
For graphics the GPU only has to render graphics at qHD resolution - 540 x 960px, a quarter of 1080p - but it's a low-power GPU and struggles at even this resolution. The GFX benchmark is much heavier than regular games, but even 2.7 T-Rex at screen resolution is well-below the 30fps mark. Casual games should work okay, but high-end 3D games are out of the question.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Basemark X found a much bigger difference between the Galaxy Grand Prime/Adreno 306 and the Moto G (2014)/Adreno 305 and gave the win to the older GPU. That's quite unexpected as the Moto G has a 720p screen, nearly 80% more pixels than a qHD screen. Even the GFX scores show both phones on nearly equal ground, so the Motorola handset probably runs its GPU at a higher clock rate.
Higher is better
It seems that Samsung has forgone its usual browser optimizations as the Grand Prime is among the slower devices in its price range. Kraken 1.1 measured JavaScript performance to be pretty similar to Cortex-A7 based devices, even giving a small lead to the Moto G (2014). Note that we used the Internet app on the Samsung and Chrome on the Moto G (as that's the only browser available out of the box on the mostly pure Android setup).
Lower is better
Basemark 2.1 was even harsher when judging the Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime, putting it behind the low-cost Lumia 535, which has a slower chipset (quad-core Cortex-A5 and Adreno 302), but renders web pages at the same qHD resolution.
Higher is better
With Android 5.0 Lollipop Google switched to a new runtime - ART - retiring the old Dalvik. Also, Lollipop has optimizations specifically for 64-bit platforms, but we're not even sure if the Grand Prime will be updated so it's no use to speculate how that will improve performance.
As it is right now, the chipset is fast enough for daily use but the advantage of the newer Cortex-A53 cores quickly fades away when compared to a higher clock Cortex-A7. The GPU is okay for casual gaming, which is the biggest kind of mobile and we couldn't really expect much better at this price range. Web browsing was a bit of a disappointment as it's clear that even lower-power hardware can do better with the right software.
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