Samsung Galaxy S5 vs Oppo Find 7a: Phantom menace

Performance

We're undergoing a shakeup of our benchmark section and we have an updated lineup of tests featuring modern, popular tests. We put the two contenders in our office through their paces, along with several other high-end devices we had in our office.

Going in, we expected the two to be fairly equal, with a slight CPU advantage for the Galaxy S5. After all both have Snapdragon 801 chipsets, except Samsung uses the MSM8974AC version, which has an overclocked CPU compared to the MSM8974AB inside the Oppo Find 7a.

Surprisingly, Geekbench 3 put the Oppo on top, by a small margin but still on top. This is despite the 8-9% advantage in clockspeed the Galaxy S5 has.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  3093
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  3011
• LG G Pro 2
  2585
• LG Nexus 5
  2453

Next we tried Basemark OS II, which showed virtually no difference in overall performance. There's a small single-core advantage for the Find 7a, but the Galaxy S5 closes the gap in the multi-core test. Naturally, we got suspicious so we ran the anti-cheat version of another Basemark test, Basemark X, but it showed no difference from the regular version. This means there should be no shenanigans going on.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• LG G Pro 2
  1140
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  1082
• Oppo Find 7a
  1057

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  2580
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  2415
• LG G Pro 2
  2401

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  10256
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  10063
• LG G Pro 2
  9802

The Samsung Galaxy S5 came out ahead in AnTuTu 4, a full system benchmark and both were well ahead of Snapdragon 800 devices, like the Nexus 5 and LG G Pro 2.

AnTuTu 4

Higher is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  36018
• Oppo Find 7a
  33344
• LG G Pro 2
  29603
• LG Nexus 5
  25097

Both Snapdragon 801 versions have the same GPU clockspeed (which is higher than on the 800) and both devices have the same screen resolution. Still, there were some differences in performance with the Oppo Find 7a coming out on top in GFXBench 2.7, while the Samsung Galaxy S5 topped GFXBench.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  28.4
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  27.8
• LG Nexus 5
  23
• LG G Pro 2
  22.9

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  28.8
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  28.1
• LG G Pro 2
  24.1
• LG Nexus 5
  24

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  11.8
• Oppo Find 7a
  11.4
• LG G Pro 2
  8.7

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  11.7
• Oppo Find 7a
  11.4
• LG G Pro 2
  9.2

We also ran Epic Citadel, which more strongly favored the Oppo than GFX 2.7. Note that the Galaxy S5 runs Android 4.4 KitKat, which has OpenGL ES 3.0 support, while the Find 7a is on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean that only supports OpenGL ES 2.0. Most games still use 2.0, but it's interesting that the newer software gave no advantage to the Samsung flagship.

Epic Citadel (Ultra)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  57.7
• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  53.7

Kraken is a JavaScript benchmark from the makers of SunSpider and is quite similar to it, except SunSpider suffered from its popularity - all browser makers optimized heavily for it, leading to unrealistic results.

The Samsung-modified stock browser is usually one of the fastest and does perform quite well here, but the difference is fairly small here. Note that Oppo only put Chrome on the Find 7a so that's what we used for testing.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  6043
• LG G Pro 2
  6578
• Oppo Find 7a
  6660
• LG Nexus 5
  7148

Rightware (who also make Basemark) put out a new version of BrowserMark 2.1. Here Samsung's browser did very well again with the Oppo Find 7a splitting the difference between it and the Nexus 5.

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  1398
• LG G Pro 2
  1346
• Oppo Find 7a
  1327
• LG Nexus 5
  1286

With Samsung's laser focus on performance, we expected the Galaxy S5 to pull ahead of the Oppo Find 7a in benchmarks, especially in the gaming section. The Samsung also runs newer software, which was supposed to give it an edge as KitKat got another round of performance-enhancing changes.

Winner: Tie. The differences in performance of the two devices are measurable by benchmarks, but we doubt anyone will feel it in daily usage.