ARM Mali-G52 MP1 vs AMD Radeon R7 (Bristol Ridge)

ARM Mali-G52 MP1

The ARM Mali-G52 MP1 (or G52MC1) is an integrated mid-range graphics card for ARM based SoCs (mostly Android based Tablets). It was introduced mid 2020 in the MediaTek MT8168 with a clock speed of up to 800 MHz.

The G52 is based on the Bifrost architecture and is intended for mainstream phones. ARM claims that the G52 series offers 30% more performance density and 15% better energy efficiency compared to the ARM Mali G51 series.

The performance of the G52MP2 in our benchmarks (in the MediaTek MT8168) is clearly below the G52 MP2 version in the entry level. That means its not well suited for demanding 3D Android games like PUBG Mobile.

The GPU supports all modern graphics APIs like OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.0, OpenCL 2.0 and Renderscript.

AMD Radeon R7 (Bristol Ridge)

The AMD Radeon R7 (Bristol Ridge) is an integrated graphics card for the fastest mobile AMD Carrizo APUs. At its launch, the R7 is available on the top model FX9830P with 512 GCN shader units and a core clock of 900 MHz. The technical specifications do not differ from the AMD Radeon R7 in Carrizo, but the clock is up to 100 MHz higher. Depending on the cooling and the configurable TDP (12-45 Watts), the performance can differ quite a lot. The performance also depends on the memory (best performance with dual-channel DDR4).

Architecture and Features

According to AMD, the Radeon R7 consists of eight cores based on the third GCN generation (often called GCN 1.2 or 2.0 in the press). It is therefore very similar to the Tonga desktop chip and supports DirectX 12 (FL 12_0). Furthermore, its shaders can be used with Mantle, OpenGL and OpenCL. HSA 1.0 is supported for running code on both CPU and GPU cores simultaneously.

Compared to the Kaveri generation (Kaveri R7 with GCN 1.1), the new color compression in particular results in better memory utilization and improves the gaming performance by 5-7 %. 

The improved video decoder of Carrizo/Bristol Ridge now includes UVD 6 (Unified Video Decoder), which can decode HVEC / H.265 up to 4K in hardware. Furthermore, the VCE (Video Codec Engine) has been improved for faster transcoding of H.264. More information on architecture and features of the Bristol Ridge architecture can be found in our launch article.

Performance

Depending on the configurable TDP of the Bristol Ridge chips between 12 up to 45 Watts, there can be significant differences in games. Overall, the results are slightly better compared to the Carrizo Radeon R7 due to the higher clocks for comparable model. You can still use the Kaveri R7 benchmarks to check the gaming performance.

Power Consumption

Depending on the configurable TDP (cTDP), the 28 nm chip is specified at 12-45 Watts. It can therefore be used for thin and light notebooks as well as medium-sized devices or All-in-Ones (AiO).