Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III vs. HTC One X: Alien vs. Predator

Synthetic benchmarks

Benchmark Pi is a simple single-threaded benchmark, so we thought we knew what we can expect from it. Yet, the Galaxy S III got pretty much the same result as the HTC One X and even though its 4 Cortex-A9 cores are clocked 100MHz lower than those of the HTC top dog. The Krait cores powering the HTC One S take the top spot though.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• HTC One S
  306
• HTC One X
  330
• 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

Linpack offers multithreaded benchmarking, making it essential for testing quad-core beasts. The Samsung Galaxy S III managed to beat the One X by a pretty comfortable margin. The One S once again comes out on top, with a 19% lead on the S III.

Linpack

Higher is better

• HTC One S
  210
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  177.1
• HTC One X
  160.9
• 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 is a composite benchmark (it tests CPU, GPU and I/O). The HTC One X takes the top spot here with both the Galaxy S III and HTC One S trailing it.

Quadrant

Higher is better

• HTC One X
  5952
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5365
• HTC One S
  5047
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  3531
• Sony Xperia S
  3173
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  3053
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  2316

The Samsung Galaxy S III relies on a Mali-400MP GPU, though the exact details (number of cores, clock speed, etc.) are still to be revealed. The One X has an NVIDIA GPU and both have to push the exact same number of pixels.

The Galaxy S III shows the best 3D performance of a droid phone yet, with a small advantage over the One X. Both phones showed lower frame rates than the One S, but they have 720p screens versus the qHD screen of the One S (which has about 33% fewer pixels), so their GPUs are quite close in performance and better than the Adreno 225.

Note that older Samsung models used to have a 60fps framerate maximum set in software and we're not sure yet if the Galaxy S III is running into such a limit, artificially lowering its score (NenaMark reports the results in FPS). Let's see what GLBenchmark has to say.

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

• HTC One S
  60.5
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  58.8
• HTC One X
  56.6
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  51.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  43.6
• Sony Xperia S
  37.5
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  24
• HTC Sensation XE
  23

We're using the Egypt test in offscreen 720p mode so that results are directly comparable even though some devices have physical screen resolutions different from 720p.

The Samsung Galaxy S III cements its lead, with a whopping 40fps more than the HTC One X. The One X offers the very playable 63fps, but heavier games will push it below the 30fps mark sooner than they do the S III.

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
  63
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  62
• HTC One S
  56

SunSpider is a JavaScript benchmark that doesn't care much about the number of CPU cores, but is strongly affected by how optimized the JavaScript engine is and the raw performance of a core.

The Samsung Galaxy S III and the HTC One X are pretty evenly matched in the SunSpider test and even outpace the One S.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1447
• HTC One X
  1468
• HTC One S
  1708
• New Apple iPad
  1722
• 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 adds HTML to the equation - behind the scenes JavaScript computation won't do much if the web page can't update fast and smooth. The Galaxy S III tops this chart as well, and quite comfortably at that, with decent lead over the One X.

BrowserMark

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  169811
• HTC One X
  140270
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  113256
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  111853
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  103591
• New Apple iPad
  103264
• HTC One S
  98435
• Apple iPhone 4S
  88725
• Sony Xperia S
  74990
• HTC Sensation XE
  72498