Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 preview: First look

Synthetic benchmarks

Samsung has gone for the Marvell PXA986 chipset which packs an all too familiar combination of two Cortex A9 cores. With a clock speed of 1.2GHz, the combo doesn't sound particularly exciting, but we've seen it do alright in the past and in this price range that's more than enough.

However, it's a good match for a budget offering and should behave reasonably in our series of benchmark tests. The amount of RAM is on par with rivals in the category, but isn't groundbreaking considering most high-end phones now pack 2GB.

Starting off with BenchMark Pi, the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 manages to score 483 points, just 16 better than the previous generation of the tablet. Maybe a step forward for Marvell over the older TI chipset, but hardly a big step for the device itself.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0
  324
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  351
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
  470
• Samsung Galaxy 3 7.0
  483
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 Plus
  488
• Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
  499
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
  520
• Huawei MediaPad
  703

In Linpack, the Marvell chipset starts to show its technological age and falls further behind other tablets in the list. Two cores only get you so far, and the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 gets demolished by the likes of the quad-core Nexus 7 and Galaxy Note 10.1.

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0
  324
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 Plus
  222
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  185
• Google Nexus 7
  124.3
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  105.2
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
  86.5
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  96
• Samsung Galaxy 3 7.0
  78
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
  76.8

We suspect web browsing will be one of the primary jobs of the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 and running Jelly Bean means an optimized JavaScript engine. As a result, the web-based benchmarks ended with decent results for the 7 incher. It even manages to beat the Apple A5 chipset (dual 1GHz Cortex-A9) but that's not much of a surprise.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  1233
• Huawei MediaPad
  2490
• Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
  2253
• Galaxy Tab 3 7.0
  1100
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
  1992
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
  1953
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  1891
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  1366
• new Apple iPad
  1722
• Google Nexus 7
  1703

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G
  2555
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  2438
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  2228
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  2363
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0
  1612
• HTC One
  2262
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2170
• Sony Xperia ZL
  2107
• Sony Xperia Z
  2093
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1801
• Oppo Find 5
  1797
• Nexus 4
  1794
• Nokia Lumia 920
  1774
• Google Nexus 10
  1773
• HTC Butterfly
  1475
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1247

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One
  2382
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2265
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• Sony Xperia ZL
  2186
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  2060
• Google Nexus 10
  1929
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  1633
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  1777
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0
  1440
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Nexus 4
  1310

Overall, the dual-core Cortex-A9 configuration behaves pretty much as expected. It's not going to win any races, but it gets the job done. Occasional lags were inevitable we guess, but some of those may be down to our test unit being a pre-market sample.