A few days ago we compared Amlogic A311D to Rockchip RK3399 since both the top-of-the-line processors from Amlogic and Rockchip are currently available. Rockchip RK3588 will even be faster, but we need to wait until Q1 2020 at least before it becomes available, and delays are not unheard of, so I’d expect it may take about one year before I can get my hands on a sample.
Another comparison is against Amlogic S912, the previous high-end processor from the company. Amlogic A311D and S922X-B are newer and will be faster but it’s interesting to find out just how much. Note the Amlogic S922X found in ODROID-N2 is clocked at a lower speed compare to A311D/S922X-B, so performance will be somewhat lower. Since I recently benchmarked Khadas VIM3 with Amlogic A311D processor, I decided to dust off my old Khadas VIM2 Amlogic S912 development board, fit it a large heatsink, install the latest Android 7.1 firmware for the board, and run the benchmarks again. You’ll find screenshots of the results at the end of this post.
Amlogic S922X-B/A311D vs Amlogic S912 – Key features
| Amlogic A311D & S922X-B |
Amlogic S912 | |
| CPU | Quad-core Cortex-A73 @ 2.21 GHz Dual-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.8 GHz |
Octa-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.51 GHz |
| GPU | Arm Mali-G52MP4 with OpenGL ES 3.1 support | ARM Mali-T820MP3 with OpenGL ES 3.0 support |
| NPU | Yes (5.0 TOPS) | No |
| Multimedia | ||
| – 4K 10-bit HEVC decode | Up to 60 fps | |
| – 4K VP9 decode | Up to 60 fps | |
| – 4K H.264 decode | Up to 30 fps (8-bit only) | |
| – Encode | 1080p60 H.264/H.265 | 1080p60 H.264 |
| – HDR | Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, and PRIME HDR | Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG |
Amlogic S912 is an octa-core processor so people who do not follow the market, may think it will be faster than Amlogic S922X-B hexa-core processor, but the latter comes with more powerful Cortex-A73 cores and Cortex-A53 both clocked at a higher frequency thanks to a 12nm manufacturing processor. The GPU is also more modern with OpenGL ES 3.1 support.
Amlogic S912 was launched at a time when nobody had ever heard of NPU (Neural Processing Unit) in Arm SoCs. Multimedia features are similar, but Amlogic A311D/S922X-B does have support for H.265 encoding, and more HDR (High Dynamic Range) options.
Amlogic S922X-B vs Amlogic S912 – Benchmarks
| Amlogic A311D/S922-X | Amlogic S912 |
Ratio | |
| Antutu 7.x | |||
| Overall | 131,555 | 51,640 | 2.55x |
| Overall exc. OpenGL 3.1 “Refinery” (1) | 114,335 | 51,640 | 2.21x |
| CPU | 53,350 | 25,891 | 2.06x |
| GPU | 35,473 | 4,902 | 7.24x |
| GPU exc. OpenGL 3.1 “Refinery” (1) | 18,253 | 4,902 | 3.72x |
| UX | 33,731 | 16,949 | 1.99x |
| MEM | 6,001 | 3,898 | 1.54x |
| PCMark 10 | |||
| Overall | 5,968 | 3,297 | 1.81x |
| Web Browsing 2.0 | 6,450 | 3,286 | 1.96x |
| Video Editing | 5,298 | 4,089 | 1.30x |
| Writing 2.0 | 5,713 | 2,383 | 2.40x |
| Photo Editing 2.0 | 7,164 | 4,814 | 1.49x |
| Data Manipulation | 5,435 | 2,525 | 2.15x |
| 3DMark – Sling Shot (OpenGL ES 3.0) |
|||
| Total score | 1,659 | 473 | 3.51x |
| Graphics score | 1,558 | 407 | 3.83x |
| Physics score | 2,143 | 1,093 | 1.96x |
(1) Refinery does not run on Khadas VIM2 / Amlogic S912 since OpenGL ES 3.1 is not supported, and as such the score was 0, while Khadas VIM3 got 17,220 points in the same test. This distorts the results, so I’ve also presented results without Refinery, which give a more realistic view of the performance difference.
Amlogic A311D is way faster than Amlogic S912, roughly doubling the CPU performance, web browsing scores, and so on. I can remember I was disappointed when Amlogic S912 with Mali-T820MP3 was not that much faster compared to Amlogic S905 with Mali-450MP3 GPU in games and benchmarks. But in their latest SoCs, Amlogic did not mess around, provided a proper upgrade with Mali-G52MP4 GPU providing 3 to 4 times 3D graphics performance, and making it suitable as a gaming platform.
So if you have an old Amlogic S912 SBC or TV box and wonder if it’s worth upgrading to Amlogic S922X-B or A311D, don’t hesitate anymore, unless all you do is watching videos in which case the experience should be similar. Amlogic S922X will also provide a significant upgrade over S912, but just a little slower compared to A311D due to the 1.8 GHz maximum CPU frequency.
Addendum – Khadas VIM2 / Amlogic S912 Benchmark Data (Android 8.0, August 2019)
CPU-Z
Antutu 7.2.2
PCMark 10 Work 2.0 performance
3DMark Sling Shot OpenGL ES 3.0 Benchmark
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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