Benchmark Booster found in Samsung Galaxy S4

The battle for the best and most powerful Android smartphone in the world is sometimes heavily fought in benchmark scores. This is how the Galaxy S3 was known to be the better Android phone. Same is true with the Galaxy S4.

However, in a recent investigation by AnandTech, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was found to have been optimized for specific benchmark tools.

These are the apps where the Galaxy S4 is instructed to run at full power:

Quadrant (standard, advanced, and professional)
Linpack (free)
Benchmark Pi
AnTuTu Benchmark

When these apps are running, the GPU of the Galaxy S4 is forced to run at 532MHz. Everything else, even graphics-intensive games, will only trigger a maximum GPU frequency of just 480MHz.

The same is true with the CPU (both Exynos 5 and Snapdragon 600) — when those benchmark apps are running, the system triggers the CPU to run at maximum frequency on all 4 cores.

In our review of the Galaxy S4, we saw the handset clocking in the highest scores in benchmark tests by Quadrant and Antutu.

This means that the environment in which regular apps and games would run on the Galaxy S4 is not the same as the settings put forth while running these specific bench-marking apps. While we cannot categorically conclude that Samsung is over-clocking their chips just to score higher/better in these benchmarks, there is certainly evidence of benchmark optimization.

{source}

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

32 Comments

abuzalzal says:

11 years ago

It’s not cheating…

It’s deception
- Reply
sir cheap says:

11 years ago

Now this reminds me of the benchmark competition between Nvidia and ATI’s grpahics cards during the early 2000s. Not to mention, games that will only run on a specific graphics card.
- Reply
Bench says:

11 years ago

And this is why one does not simply buy a smartphone or tablet solely due to its benchmark scores. I’m looking at you, benchmark-whores.
- Reply
Abed M. says:

11 years ago

Desperation.
- Reply
Darius says:

11 years ago

for regular users like me who doesn’t care so much about benchmarks, i can still say na the s4 is one of the fastest android in the market right now.
- Reply
Irene@GeekyGirlyLife says:

11 years ago

I understand why Samsung would optimize their phones for benchmarks. I think it’s pretty much like SEO. You want to increase your chances “to get noticed”. Personally, I don’t rely on benchmarks when buying a gadget. If the phone feels right and if it has all the features I’m looking for, that’s usually what I would go for.
- Reply
setsuna says:

11 years ago

Its not deception. Its just showing us the maximum potential of the processor.
- Reply
nameless says:

11 years ago

o c’mon people. If a game can’t optimize the use of cores and maximum freq, it’s the game’s fault. The hardwares are just there. It’s up for the software engrs to utilize them. Don’t blame the device if your app is not designed to utilize its maximum potential. Again it’s not cheating. Those people who are easily deceived by benchmarks are just fools.
- Reply
snowden says:

11 years ago

why not use the benchmark booster to boost graphic-intensive apps? why limit it to benchmarking tools????
- Reply
Hmmm says:

11 years ago

Maybe because they thought about the handset’s battery consumption ang longitivity, so they set these cores to the right (not to its highest limit) frequency in a level in which all games and apps would run smoothly even without raising it to its maximum clock. If there was a reason behind this i think that must be it.
- Reply
ohohkhimee says:

11 years ago

shame on you samsung..iphone 5 with its only dual core can wipe out that s4 in terms of smoothness and speed..no lags, forceclose, hangs and auto shutdown..thats apple thats quality..hd games? Name it runs smoothly..
- Reply
Schwartz MD says:

11 years ago

What are benchmarks for? They show the maximum potential of a phone. Why would you set your phone to highest speed always. It’s not that much different from a car for example. The manufacturer may claim that it can reach a certain top speed in an ideal situation but you may never reach that speed (unless you tweak your engine of course). My car’s manual says it’s maximum speed is at 205kph, but the fastest I got was 185kph even when it was new. This article could be misleading. Based on my understanding, there’s shouldn’t be any issue about it… Well, haters gonna hate.
- Reply
expwfirmwareprgmng says:

11 years ago

Just reacting to a post above that says “dahil nakaprogram ang processor ng s4 na hanggang dito lang sya dapat tumakbo”. That is inaccurate, that claim was never made in oiginal article. While the processor is tuned to clock lower than the maximum it can handle (for many obvious reasons), nothing is preventing apps from using this reserved and unused power if they can and they need to. So it’s like applications triggering the requirement.

The real trick here is that the phone is hardcoded to react to the benchmarking apps proactively, triggering the max cpu power by itself and for the benchmarking software.
- Reply