Apple A15 Bionic Chip vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 680

We’ve compiled a side-by-side comparison of the newly released A15 Bionic Chip versus Snapdragon 680 SoCs, brought to you by Apple and Qualcomm respectively. This comparison examines the pros and cons of these 6-core and 8 -core processors, with data from Geekbench, Antutu, and 3DMark benchmarks, alongside their detailed technical specifications.

Review

General comparison of performance, power consumption, and other indicators
CPU Performance
Evaluation of Single-Core and Multi-Core Processor Performance
Gaming Performance
Gaming and OpenCL/Vulkan Performance of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
Battery life
Energy Efficiency in Battery Usage
Tech Insist Score
Overall Performance Rating of the Chip

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of A15 Bionic Chip
  • A15 Bionic Chip has 34.58% higher CPU clock speed than Snapdragon 680 (3230 vs 2400 MHz).
  • A15 Bionic Chip has 7.72% higher GPU clock speed than Snapdragon 680 (1200 vs 1114 MHz).
  • A15 Bionic Chip has 100.00% higher memory frequency than Snapdragon 680 (4266 vs 2133 MHz).
  • A15 Bionic Chip has 16.67% smaller sized transistor than Snapdragon 680 (5 vs 6 nm).
  • A15 Bionic Chip has 221.64 % better AnTuTu 9 score than Snapdragon 680 (809 K vs 252 K).
  • A15 Bionic Chip has the latest instruction set, hence better than Snapdragon 680.
  • A15 Bionic Chip supports 100.59 % higher memory bandwidth than Snapdragon 680 ( 34.1 vs 17 MHz).

Benchmarks

Evaluating performance through competitive testing in leading benchmarks.

AnTuTu 10

The AnTuTu Benchmark evaluates CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O capabilities across various scenarios.
CPU 209204 81097
GPU 351594 38425
Memory 118044 68438
UX 130276 63600
Total score 809118 251560

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
Multi-Core Score

3DMark

A cross-platform benchmark that assesses graphics performance in Vulkan (Metal)
3DMark Wild Life Performance
Stability 82% 99%
Graphics test 56 FPS 2 FPS
Score 9524 443

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of A15 Bionic Chip and Dimensity 9300

CPU

Architecture 2x 3.23 GHz – Avalanche
4x 2.02 GHz – Blizzard
4x 2.4 GHz – Kryo 265 Gold (Cortex-A73)
4x 1.8 GHz – Kryo 265 Silver (Cortex-A53)
Cores 6 8
Base Frequency 2020MHz 1800MHz
Turbo Frequency 3230MHz 2400MHz
Instruction set ARMv8.5-A ARMv8-A
L2 cache 256 KB -
L2 cache 32 MB -
L3 cache - -
Process 5 nanometers 6 nanometers
Transistor count 15 billion -
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) 6 W -

Graphics

GPU name Apple GPU Adreno 610
Architecture - Adreno 610
GPU frequency 1200 MHz 1114 MHz
Pipelines 5 2
Shading units 640 96
Total shaders 1280 192
FLOPS - -
Vulkan version - 1.1
OpenCL version - 2.0
DirectX version - 12

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) Neural Engine Hexagon 686

Memory

Memory type LPDDR4X LPDDR4X
Memory frequency 4266 MHz 2133 MHz
Bus - -
Max bandwidth 34.1 Gbit/s 17 Gbit/s
Max size 6 GB 8 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type NVMe eMMC 5.1, UFS 2.2
Max display resolution 2732 x 2048 2520 x 1080
Max camera resolution - 1x 64MP, 2x 16MP
Video capture 4K at 60FPS 1K at 60FPS
Video playback 4K at 60FPS 1080p at 60FPS
Video codecs H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, Motion JPEG H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9
Audio codecs AAC, AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV, AC-3, E-AC-3, AAX, AAX+ AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV

Connectivity

Modem - X11
4G support LTE Cat. 24 LTE Cat. 13
5G support Yes No
Download speed 5G Up to 7500 Mbps -
Download speed 4G - Up to 390 Mbps
Upload speed 5G Up to 3000 Mbps -
Upload speed 4G - Up to 150 Mbps
Wi-Fi 6 5
Bluetooth 5.0 5.1
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, SBAS, NAVIC

Info

Announced September 2021 October 2021
Class Flagship Mid-range
Model number APL1W07 SM6225
Official page A15 Bionic Chip official site Snapdragon 680 official site