Top 10 best GPU in mobile and tablet devices 2016

Yesterday my brother was searching for budget android mobile and he has chosen one mobile to buy. Actually he doesn’t know much about gadgets. He just know everything should be more like internal storage, camera, ram and processor speed etc. when I asked him which gpu it has he didn’t know name of it but he replied it has gpu so it can run games. Most of people think same they want more storage more pixels in camera more ram more processor speed it’s understandable but what about GPU? Most of the mobile users ignore this feature specially ladies and kids. They just see few important things and ignore GPU.Let me tell you gpu is the very important thing for your android device. You can play all type of android game if you have selected the right mobile with right processor, ram and gpu. I know most of us don’t have much knowledge about these small chips even if we know more about computer hardware and graphic card than mobile. But never mind I will try to show you top ten gpu available in the android mobiles market. So you can check my this post for buying new android mobile with right graphic unit.

Top 10 Graphic Processing Unit for smartphones

The list can be changed any time as new graphic card release for smartphone and tablet right now these are the top gpu which are available in the smartphones and tablet you can check their gaming performance by just searching the gpu name in Google or YouTube.

1. PowerVR GT7XT Series

PowerVr GT7XT is the fastest GPU series for smartphones. it is used by many Apple product like iPad Air 2, A9 SoC chipset which is placed inside Iphone 6s and 6s plus. It is part of a powerful GPU series 7XT which is based on unified shader architecture with 6 clusters that integrate 192 (FP16) / 384 ((FP32) ALU cores upcoming model has 16 clusters and 512-1024 ALU cores. Compare to any 6XT GPU it is much more efficient and improved performance. It is more energy efficient thanks to 3D transistors and improved 14/16 nm fabrication process.

Quick specification 

• 12 Cluster 
• 384 unified ALU
• PowerVR Rogue Architecture
• 14/16 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 11.2
• Supports OpenGL® ES up to 3.x, AEP, OpenGL 3.3, DirectX 10, OpenCL™ 1.2 EP
• Used in Apple A9x

2. Nvidia Tegra X1

It is the second fastest GPU in the market right now for tablets and mobile with the architecture called Maxwell. It can be called improved version of Tegra k1 with more CUDA cores, two geometry units and 16 texture units, 16 ROPs, High memory bandwidth 25.6 GB/s and LPDDR4 memory. If you compare it with previous tegra chipset you find a huge performance boost as you will see in the graph below. 

Quick specification 

• 256 CUDA cores
• Core Speed 1000 Mhz 
• 32000 Mhz Memory speed
• 64 Bit Memory Bus Width
• Using shared Memory
• 20 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 11.2
• Supports CUDA 6.0, AEP, OpenGL ES 3.1
• Used in Nvidia Tegra X1

3. Qualcomm Adreno 530

Qualcomm Adreno 530 was the fastest GPU in mid-2015 for smartphones and tablets. It is used in the Snapdragon 820 SoC. It is using shared memory and running at the speed of 624 MHz. Compare to other Adreno series it is still the fastest Gpu made by Adreno till date 27/4/2016.

Quick specification 

• Shaders clocked at up to 624 MHz
• Using shared memory
• 14 nm Technology
• It supports OpenGL ES 3.1 AEP, OpenCL 2.0, Direct3D 11.1 (FL 11_1)
• Used in Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996

4. PowerVR GXA6850

It has been used in apple A8X chipset very effectively with very high energy efficiency in their apple iPad Air 2. It was the fastest mobile GPU in 2014 it can easily run all the HD games without any problem with deep coloring support for HD resolution. It run at 450 MHz Core speed with 128 Bit memory bus width, OpenGL 3.x/4.x, OpenGL ES 3.0, it also supports DX10 and more FP16 GFLOPS which helps for less-power rendering.

Quick specification

• 8 Clusters
• Core speed 450 Mhz 
• 128 Bit Memory Bus
• PowerVR Rogue Architecture
• 20 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 10
• Supports OpenGL upto 4.x, OpenGL ES 3.0
• Used in Apple A8X

5. NVIDIA Tegra K1 Kepler GPU

NVidia Tegra k1 Kempler GPU also known as Tegra 5 it was announced on 6/1/2015 at that time it was the fastest GPU. It has 192 CUDA cores at clock of 950 MHz and using shader 5.0 with directx 11. GXA6850 and tegra 5 both are tough competitor of each other they both can come at same position. It was designed for tablet and used in NVIDIA Shield Tablet which is known as a high end gaming tablet. 

Quick specification 

• 192 CUDA Cores
• 950 Clock rates
• Kepler Architecture
• 28 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 11
• Supports Shader 5.0
• Used in Nvidia Tegra K1

6. Apple A9 / PowerVR GT7600

PowerVR GT7600 is a high end GPu and also part of a powerful series of GPU GT7xT the gpu already used in iPhone 6s and 6s plus which is a high performance smartphone of 2015. At its announcement it was the fastest GPU but now it successor coming into play the performance and power efficiency of this model absolutely amazing. 

Quick specification 

• 6 Cluster
• 192 ALU cores
• 14/16 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 10, 11.2
• Supports OpenGL ES upto 3.3, OpenCL 1.2 1.2 EP
• Used in Apple A9

7. ARM Mali-T880 MP12

The GPU ARM Mali T880 MP12 is a 4th gen Gpu which is used in Samsung Exynos 8890 chipset and the chip integrated in Samsung galaxy s7 mobiles. Mali T8xxx series has 3 variants and MP12 version clocked up to 650 Mhz with 12 cores but it can be built up to 16 cores/clusters without losing any significant performance. 

Quick specification 

• Midgard 4th Gen
• 12 Cores 
• Clock speed of 650 MHz
• 14 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 11.2
• Supports OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.2
• Used in Samsung Exynos 8890 Octa

8. ARM Mali-T760 MP8

ARM Mali T760 MP8 is also used in Samsung chipset but little old one Samsung Exyons 7420 Octa which is used in Samsung galaxy s6. It’s also can be used 1 to 16 cores but using 8 cores at the speed of 772 MHz. Mali T7xx series has 6 variants and it is the faster one it’s a 3rd gen GPU for smartphones but still can run any HD android game. 

Quick specification 

• Midgard 3rd Gen
• 8 Cores 
• Clock speed of 770-772 MHz
• 14 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 11
• Supports OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.1, Renderscript, FSAA/MSAA
• Used in Samsung Exynos 7420 Octa

9. Qualcomm Adreno 430

Qualcomm Adreno 430 released in the beginning of 2015 it’s an integrated graphic card design only for android smartphones and tablets. The gpu used in snapdragon 810 SoC which is integrated in many high performance android devices the technology they used to build this card known as FlexRender. The gpu uses 192 unified shaders at the speed of 650 MHz. it could be faster than this but heating issue force the developers to reduce it clock rates. 

Quick specification 

• 192 unified shaders 
• Clock speed of 650 MHz
• Shared Memory 
• 20 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 11
• Supports OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.2
• Used in Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 MSM8994

10. ARM Mali-T880 MP4

Another Mail T880 series GPU came under top 10 gpu list the MP4 variant of Mali T880 has 4 cores/clusters which is running at the speed of 900 MHz it is used in Huawei/HiSilicon Kirin 950 the chip will be available in 2016 it’s a 4th gen gpu and performance much better than few other 8 core gpu thanks to its power and 16nm technology process in the kirin 950. It might be used in Huawei mate 8.

Quick specification 

• Midgrad 4th gen Architecture
• 4 cores at the speed of 900 MHz
• 16 nm Technology
• Supports DirectX 11.2
• Supports OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.2
• Used in HiSilicon Kirin 955 and HiSilicon Kirin 950

Hope my this post will clear your mind with these gpu and you will understand which gpu is better to go for. if you think my ranking is wrong you can comment below so i would reconsider on it.

Whenever you see MP in the end of any mobile GPU model number that’s mean is single core and when it’s MP2 that’s mean its dual core and MP3 means its tri core and MP4 means quad core.