Snapdragon is one of the biggest chipsets manufactures globally, supplying the brain of modern-day smartphones to companies all around the world. The company has a varied portfolio of chipsets for every range, from entry-level smartphones, budget devices to high-end premium smartphones. The company has released several chipsets in the mid-range segment for devices.

Snapdragon 625 is a mid-range chipset which the company launched in 2016. The chipset can provide fast connectivity, vibrant display colours, and robust performance being power efficient.

Samsung has also been manufacturing its chipset range under the name of the Exynos series. They also supply other smartphone manufacturers with the Exynos chipsets. Samsung released the Exynos 7870 for the mid-range devices in 2016, which is very similar to the Snapdragon 625 in specifications but still, there are differences between the two chipsets.

We place the two chipsets head-to-head below on different parameters with a specification comparison table at the end of the article. Read ahead to find out the differences between the chipsets.

Also read: Processors: How many cores and GigaHertz do you need?

Semiconductor

The Snapdragon 625 uses a 14 nm LPP manufacturing process. The Exynos 7870 also uses the 14 nm FinFET manufacturing process. Both these chipsets have the same architecture, thus have equal power consumption and processing power.

CPUs

The Snapdragon 625 has 8 ARM Cortex A53 CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 2.0GHz. The Exynos 7870 has the same CPU core setup. It has 8 ARM Cortex A53 CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 1.6GHz. This increased clock speed makes the SD 625 25% faster than the 7870 chipsets.

GPU and RAM

The Snapdragon 625 uses an Adreno 506 GPU and LPDDR3 as supported RAM with a memory speed of 933MHz. The Exynos 7870 uses Mali-T830 MP1 GPU and LPDDR3 for the RAM requirement with a memory speed of 1866MHz. The 7870 has almost double the memory speed of 625, which gives quicker system performance.

Benchmark (Antutu)

The Snapdragon 625 (Xiaomi Mi A1) has an Antutu score of 78328, while the Exynos 7870(Samsung J7 Pro) has a score of 47,676. SD 625 chipset leaves the Exynos 7870 far behind in terms of benchmark scores because of the chipset’s increased clock speed.

Camera and Display

The Snapdragon 625 can support dual ISP up to 24MP and FHD+, WUXGA display with a resolution of up to 1900×1200. The Exynos 7870 can support 16MP or 8MP+8MP dual camera setup at the back and up to 16MP at the front. 7870 supports up to WUXGA with a resolution of 1920×1200.

Miscellaneous Features

Snapdragon 625  and Exynos 7870 both have an NX bit that helps protect the computer from malicious attacks. Both chipsets have Hardware-Assisted Virtualization, AES, which speeds up encryption and decryption time. Trust zone secures the device for use with features such as mobile payments and streaming video using digital rights management. However, both the chipsets 625 and 7870 lack out-of-order execution, making CPU use instruction cycles that would have gone wasted because of delays. Samsung Exynos 7870 has HMP or Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP), a more advanced version of big.LITTLE technology.

Both the chipsets work on the same 14 nm architecture, but the Snapdragon 625 overpowers the 7870 because of the over-clocked 2.0GHz CPU speed and more powerful Adreno 506 GPU. Both chipsets are very good for the price-segment they serve, but SD 625 is the winner between 7870 and 625.

Also read: Kirin 710 vs Snapdragon 675

Category	Exynos 7870	Snapdragon 625
Node	14 nm LPP	14 nm FinFET
CPU	8x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1.6 GHz, Octa-core CPU	8x ARM Cortex A53 @ 2.0GHz, Octa-core CPU
GPU	Mali-T830 MP1 GPU	Adreno 506 GPU
Memory	LPDDR3 Memory speed: 1866MHz	LPDDR3 Memory speed: 933MHz
Benchmark Scores (Antutu)	47,676 (Samsung J7 Pro)	78,328 (Xiaomi Mi A1)
Camera	“Rear 16MP, Front 16MP, Dual Camera 8MP+8MP”	Dual ISP up to 24MP
Video: Decode/Encode	“Full HD 60fps encoding and decoding with HEVC (H.265), H.264, VP8 Codec”	“Video Playback: Up to 4K Ultra HD video playback Codec Support: H.265 (HEVC), H.264 (AVC)”
Charging	N/A	Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 technology
Display	Up to WUXGA (1920×1200)	“Max On-Device Display: FHD+, WUXGA Display Pixels: 1900×1200 UI FPS: Up to 60 FPS”
Bluetooth	N/A	BT 4.1