What is the difference between Apple A9 and Samsung Exynos 980? Should you buy phone having Apple A9 or should go for Samsung Exynos 980? Well, you'll get all your questions cleared here.Compare two chipset models on the basis of their benchmark score (AnTuTu and Geekbench), pros and cons, technical specs categorised into gaming, CPU, GPU, Multimedia, and Connectivity.
Apple A9 has a AnTuTu benchmark score of 171612 and Samsung Exynos 980 has AnTuTu score of 336267. Apple A9 comes up with 2 cores, 1850 MHz frequency and on the other hand, Samsung Exynos 980 has 8 cores and 2200 MHz frequency. In terms of Graphics, Apple A9 has PowerVR GT7600 GPU and Rogue architecture and latter Samsung Exynos 980 comes up with Mali G76MP5 GPU and Bifrost architecture.
Go through detailed comparison below to see the actual difference and similarity between both chipsets.
| Specifications | A9 | Exynos 980 |
|---|---|---|
| Total score | 171612 | 336267 |
| Frequency | 1850 MHz | 2200 MHz |
| Max size | 4 GB | 8 GB |
| Max display resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 3360 x 1440 |
AnTuTu Score | ||
| CPU | 70699 | 120146 |
| GPU | 36687 | 88635 |
| Memory | 31959 | 62029 |
| UX | 35338 | 62998 |
| Total score | 171612 | 336267 |
Connectivity Features | ||
| Modem | Qualcomm MDM9635M | Exynos 5123 |
| 4G support | LTE Cat. 6 | LTE Cat. 18 |
| 5G support | No | Yes |
| Download speed | Up to 450 Mbps | Up to 2550 Mbps |
| Upload speed | Up to 150 Mbps | Up to 1280 Mbps |
| Wi-Fi | 4 | 6 |
| Bluetooth | 4.2 | 5.0 |
Performance | ||
| Processor | 2x 1.85 GHz – Twister | 2x 2.2 GHz – Cortex-A776x 1.8 GHz – Cortex-A55 |
| Cores | 2 | 8 |
| Frequency | 1850 MHz | 2200 MHz |
| Instruction set | ARMv8-A | ARMv8.2-A |
| L2 cache | 3 MB | |
| L3 cache | 8 MB | |
| Process | 14 nanometers | 8 nanometers |
| Transistor count | 2 billion | |
| TDP | 5 W | 9 W |
Geekbench Score | ||
| Image compression | 53.4 Mpixels/s | |
| Face detection | 9.04 images/s | |
| Speech recognition | 21.9 words/s | |
| Machine learning | 26.3 images/s | |
| Camera shooting | 12.2 images/s | |
| HTML 5 | 1.34 Mnodes/s | |
| SQLite | 313 Krows/s | |
Graphics | ||
| GPU name | PowerVR GT7600 | Mali G76MP5 |
| Architecture | Rogue | Bifrost |
| GPU frequency | 650 MHz | 720 MHz |
| Execution units | 6 | 5 |
| Shading units | 192 | 80 |
| Vulkan version | 1.1 | 1.1 |
| OpenCL version | 1.2 | 2.0 |
| DirectX version | 11 | 12 |
Memory Info | ||
| Memory type | LPDDR4 | LPDDR4X |
| Memory frequency | 1333 MHz | 2133 MHz |
| Bus | 2x 32 Bit | 2x 32 Bit |
| Max bandwidth | 14.9 Gbit/s | |
| Max size | 4 GB | 8 GB |
Multimedia | ||
| Neural processor (NPU) | No | Yes |
| Storage type | NVMe | UFS 2.1 |
| Max display resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 3360 x 1440 |
| Max camera resolution | 1x 32MP, 2x 12MP | 1x 108MP, 2x 20MP |
| Video capture | 4K at 30FPS | 4K at 120FPS |
| Video playback | 4K at 30FPS | 4K at 120FPS |
| Video codecs | H.264, H.265 | H.264, H.265, VP9 |
| Audio codecs | AAC, AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV | AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV |
Apple A9 has been announced on September 2015 whereas Samsung Exynos 980 has been announced on September 2019. Check out detailed comparison with key specs below:
Benchmark measures the performance of the CPU. Geekbench is a benchmark that measures a processor's single core performance and AnTuTu score is the most popular and trustable benchmarking score which evaluates multi core performance. A9 has an AnTuTu benchmark score of 171612 points with CPU, GPU, Memory, UX score 70699, 36687, 31959, 35338 respectively.
CPU speed shows how many processing cycles per second can be executed by a CPU. A9 comes up with the architecture of Rogue and Exynos 980 comes up with architecture of Bifrost. Former one has 2 core and 1850 MHz frequency and latter has 8 cores and 2200 MHz frequency. A larger cache time leads to faster performance.
Apple A9 has PowerVR GT7600 GPU with GPU Frequency as 650 MHz. Dynamic frequency allows the processor to conserve power and reduce noise when it is under a light load. Samsung Exynos 980 has Mali G76MP5 GPU with GPU Frequency as 720 MHz.
First chipset has max size of 4 GB and Samsung Exynos 980 has max size of 4 GB. It shows the maximum amount of memory supported by a chipset.
In terms of multimedia, A9 has No NPU with storage type as NVMe and Exynos 980 has Yes NPU and UFS 2.1 storage type.