Apple A15 Bionic Chip vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 685
We’ve crafted a detailed comparison between the recently launched A15 Bionic Chip and Snapdragon 685 SoCs, developed by Apple and Qualcomm respectively. Our assessment weighs the benefits and drawbacks of these 6-core and 8-core processors based on Geekbench, Antutu, and 3DMark benchmarks, as well as their full technical specifications.
Review
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
Pros of A15 Bionic Chip
- A15 Bionic Chip has 15.36% higher CPU clock speed than Snapdragon 685 (3230 vs 2800 MHz).
- A15 Bionic Chip has 100.00% higher memory frequency than Snapdragon 685 (4266 vs 2133 MHz).
- A15 Bionic Chip has 16.67% smaller sized transistor than Snapdragon 685 (5 vs 6 nm).
- A15 Bionic Chip has 199.43 % better AnTuTu 9 score than Snapdragon 685 (809 K vs 270 K).
- A15 Bionic Chip has the latest instruction set, hence better than Snapdragon 685.
- A15 Bionic Chip supports 100.59 % higher memory bandwidth than Snapdragon 685 ( 34.1 vs 17 MHz).
Benchmarks
Evaluating performance through competitive testing in leading benchmarks.AnTuTu 10
| CPU | 209204 | 81894 |
| GPU | 351594 | 39122 |
| Memory | 118044 | 77991 |
| UX | 130276 | 71216 |
| Total score | 809118 | 270223 |
GeekBench 6
Single-Core Score
Multi-Core Score
3DMark
3DMark Wild Life Performance
| Stability | 82% | - |
| Graphics test | 56 FPS | - |
| Score | 9524 | - |
Specifications
Full list of technical specifications of A15 Bionic Chip and Dimensity 9300CPU
| Architecture | 2x 3.23 GHz – Avalanche 4x 2.02 GHz – Blizzard |
4x 2.8 GHz – Cortex-A73 4x 1.9 GHz – Cortex-A53 |
| Cores | 6 | 8 |
| Base Frequency | 2020MHz | 1900MHz |
| Turbo Frequency | 3230MHz | 2800MHz |
| Instruction set | ARMv8.5-A | ARMv8.2-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 600 |
| GPU frequency | 1200 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 | UFS 2.2 |
| Max display resolution | 2732 x 2048 | 2520 x 1080 |
| Max camera resolution | - | 1x 108MP, 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 | 5.2 |
| Navigation | GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS | GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, NAVIC |
Info
| Announced | September 2021 | March 2023 |
| Class | Flagship | Mid range |
| Model number | APL1W07 | SM6225-AD |
| Official page | A15 Bionic Chip official site | Snapdragon 685 official site |