Exynos 990, the chipset developed by Samsung’s internal team, was used in the Galaxy S20 series devices. While there was a lot of buzz about the chipset initially, it proved to be a disappointment as it could not match up to the standard of the Snapdragon 865. The Exynos 2100 was said to be an upgraded version of the Exynos 990.
The manufacturers claimed that it would complement the Snapdragon 888 and offer better efficiency in comparison to the models that were launched earlier. However, as it turned out, the chipset did not really live up to the high standards set by the Snapdragon 888.
AnandTech recently published the test result of a comparative study done between the Exynos 2100 and the Snapdragon 888. The test result largely depicted the power efficiency and the overall performance of the Exynos 2100 and the Snapdragon 888. To perform the test, two variants of the Exynos 2100 and the Snapdragon 888 were taken into consideration.
The technical team carried out a variety of tests on the Exynos 2100 and the Snapdragon 888 and it was found out that the fabrication process of Samsung’s 5nm (5LPE) has resulted in some improvement in the Exynos 2100. The power efficiency of the device was found to be significantly better than its predecessor models.
While the Exynos 2100 matches up to the performance of TSMC’s 7nm process, it is not really compatible with the much elevated 5nm process. This was one of the reasons why Qualcomm’s SD888 put up a much better performance than the Exynos 2100 in some of the tasks. It also proved to be much more energy-efficient than its competitor. The Exynos 2100 gets exhausted much before the Snapdragon 888. The latter succumbs under sustained load and slows itself down.
The individual, who did the review, got a freezer and put the Galaxy S21 Ultra and the Exynos 2100 chip inside it. The Snapdragon 888 was placed opposite a fan while conducting the benchmark tests. What was surprising was the fact that the two devices delivered almost the same results. This further exemplifies the fact that there is a high chance of the Exynos 2100 getting throttled in real-life situations.
As per the benchmark tests, the Exynos 2100 consumes a lot more power (between 18-35 %) than the Snapdragon 888. Because of this high power consumption, one might need to replace the batteries faster. The web browsing battery life test and the PCMark Work 2.0 test corroborate the speculation that the Snapdragon 888 version of the Galaxy S21 Ultra sustains itself for a longer period of time on a single charge than the Exynos 2100 version of the same device.