Qualcomm Adreno 510 vs Apple M2 8-Core GPU

Qualcomm Adreno 510

The Qualcomm Adreno 510 is a mobile graphics card for mid-range smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It is included in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 and 652 SoCs and based on the Adreno 500 architecture (like the Adreno 520 in the S820, which should be fully compatible in software).

The GPU supports modern standards like Vulkan 1.0 (according to Wikipedia), OpenGL ES 3.1 + AE (3.2 in other sources), OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 12 (FL 12.1 according to Wikipedia, 11.1 according to Qualcomm). Furthermore, the GPU supports Universal Bandwidth Compression (UBWC) to save memory bandwidth.

Compared the the faster Adreno 530, the 510 is currently produced in the older 28nm process (650 and 652) and should offer less ALUs. The clock speed is not disclosed.

Early benchmarks and performance ratings from Qualcomm position the GPU on a level with the old Adreno 330 (former high end GPU) in the Snapdragon 810. Therefore, it should be able to handle most Android games up to Full HD fluently.

Apple M2 8-Core GPU

The Apple M2 8-core GPU is an integrated graphics card offering 8 of the 10 cores designed by Apple and integrated in the Apple M2 SoC. It uses the unified memory architecture of the M2 SoC (up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 with 100 GB/s bandwidth) and should offer 128 execution units.

The performance is positioned right between the old 8-core model in the M1 GPU and the higher end 10-core model in the M2. The theoretical performance should be around 2.9 Teraflops, as the 8-core version offers the same 1,398 MHz maximum clock rate as the 10-core version. Compared to other iGPUs from AMD and Intel, the M2 benefits greatly from the unified memory architecture and the high bandwidth.

The M2 chip is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is around 10 Watt (in our tests under load of the MBP13) compared to the 13.5W of the 10-core version.