Today we present our comparative and benchmarks of the new Mediatek MT8695 SoC against the rest of SoC in the current market. This chip is a product specially focused on playback latest generation of multimedia streaming content and has been chosen for the new Fire TV Stick 4K which indicates that it has the confidence of a giant like Amazon. This SoC is a Quad Core with ARM Cortex-A53 processors that integrates a PowerVR GE8300 MP4 GPU and allows native H.265 and VP9 video decoding up to 4K@60fps with support for HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Vision. A chip that faces against the existing options of Allwinner, Rockchip, Hisilicon or Realtek and that means a considerable jump compared to Mediatek’s previous products in this sector.
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SPECIFICATIONS MEDIATEK MT8695
Test hardware
The new Fire TV Stick 4K includes the MediaTek MT8695 SoC which has four ARM Cortex-A53 cores and integrates a PowerVR GE8300 MP4 GPU with OpenGL 3.2 and Vulcan 1.1 support. This time we find a total of 1.5 GB of RAM which is double that of the previous model although we have only the classic 8 GB of storage memory. It has a Wifi dual band AC adapter with an antenna designed by Amazon that promises excellent coverage and Bluetooth 5.0 LE. It has a single OTUS microUSB port, audio and video output we have the HDMI 2.0b connector with 4K@60fps and HDR support and we have HDCP 2.2 support and all the necessary DRM, the operating system is FireOS based on Android 7.
- Fire TV Stick 4K can be purchased at Amazon.com, Amazon.de or Amazon.co.uk from $59.99 (€49.99)
CPU
The new Mediatek MT8695 Quad Core SoC integrates four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, is capable of reaching 1.69 GHz and the manufacturing process is only 12nm, which gives us performance improvements by lowering the consumption / thermal. As always in this type of products may have limited the maximum speed theory, in our tests on we have reached the maximum without problems.
- As we see the system supports only ABI armeabi-v7a which limits us to install applications in 32bit
GPU
For the graphic section there is a PowerVR GE8300 MP4 GPU with a maximum speed of 650Mhz and has a performance of about 2.6Gpix/s that leaves it almost at the same level as the Mali-G31. It has support for OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan 1.1, this GPU is made in 20nm unlike the CPU cores that remain in 12nm. We also have OpenCL 1.2 support, AMBA4 ACE BUS, ACE-LIT and DRM Beyond TrustZone support. With this GPU we can play powerful titles like PUBG in low / medium settings.
VPU
In this SoC we find the video engine with decoding support that supports h.265, VP9 codecs and also has support for HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Vision image formats. This system allows us to playback video up to UHD 4K@60fps resolutions without problems thanks to its HDMI 2.0b video output that allows support for dynamic HDR.
Android system
The test system is Fire OS 6.2.3.2 which is based on Android 7.1.2 (API 25), the kernel that controls the system is the kernel 4.4.120 with build date 2018-11-07, a fairly modern version . As we have said before due to limitations of the API, we can only install 32bit Android apps, something that streaming-oriented devices do not seem to demand.
PERFORMANCE TEST
We perform several performance tests with Mediatek MT8695 and we do a VS against Soch Rockchip RK3328, RK3399, Nvidia Tegra X1, Realtek RTD1296, Amlogic S912, S905X-H, S905X2, Allwinner H6 and the previous Mediatek MT8127D Fire TV Stick 2nd gen (Basic edition).
Antutu
Possibly the best known test (we use version 6 for compatibility), with this benchmark we get an idea of the overall performance of the device and we can buy it with others. This test is very influenced by the internal storage and other values of general performance, as we can see in the results this new SoC is almost at the level of an S905X2.
Geekbench
A test that gives us some very interesting values of the power CPU test in mono core and multi core in addition to computing by GPU. As we can see in the results, they are good both in monocore and in multicore and far surpass the previous generation.
3DMark
The graphical performance test par excellence with a fairly solid continuity in terms of results which helps us when comparing the performance of GPUs historically. As we see the GPU PowerVR GE8300 MP4 gives us good results and exceeds the widely to its previous model, as we see is a little below the Mali-G31.
PCMark
This test gives us an idea of the power level of desktop applications of this hardware performing tasks such as video editing, managing text or audio files, something that is increasingly used in Android. The result is a sum of all those aspects and is influenced by the general hardware components. The results are good, it is above the S912 and at the same time the S905X2.
Power consumption and thermals
We also make a comparison of consumption and thermal at a general level, then we will see it in detail in the review of each device. As we can see the maximum consumption remains in only 5W as a result of the jump of manufacturing process from 28nm to 12nm. An excellent figure that affects the much lower temperatures which helps the Fire TV Stick format.
CONCLUSIONS
After passing all the tests of our comparison we can say that the new Mediatek MT8695 SoC is a really attractive product for streaming applications, devices such as virtual assistants or future SmartTV. The performance to move Android is enough thanks to the Cortex-A53 CPU cores combined with a relatively powerful GPU, we also have a very high overall efficiency increase compared to the previous Mediatek model when going from 28nm to a process in 12nm, a product that we will see in many devices but unfortunately it seems that Amazon has the exclusive to use it in streaming devices and we will not see it in generic TV-Boxes.
In the Mediatek MT8695 SoC we have interesting improvements in video playback with an engine that leaves far behind the SoC used in the previous model of Fire TV stick that was very limited in Codecs. Now we have support for H.265 and VP9 as well as HDR10+, HLG and Dolby vision, at the audio level we also have Dolby Atmos support and improvements in speech recognition, something important with all the Virtual Assistant systems so popular lately. Undoubtedly a very interesting product for the multimedia streaming sector.
OTHER COMPARATIVES
- Mediatek Helio X20/23/27 Deca core
- Amlogic S905X2 Quad Core
- All Reviews with more information of latest models
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