Kirin 960 vs A10 Fusion

We compared the 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 960 (Mali-G71 MP8) with the older 4-core Apple A10 Fusion (PowerVR GT7600) SoC. Here you will find the pros and cons of each chip, technical specs, and comprehensive tests in benchmarks, like AnTuTu and Geekbench.

Review

General comparison of performance, power consumption, and other indicators
CPU Performance
Single and multi-core processor tests
Gaming Performance
GPU performance in games and OpenCL/Vulkan
Battery life
Efficiency of battery consumption
NanoReview Score
Overall chip score

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of HiSilicon Kirin 960
  • Has 4 more cores
  • Supports 93% higher memory bandwidth (28.8 against 14.9 GB/s)
  • Higher GPU frequency (~60%)
Pros of Apple A10 Fusion
  • Shows significantly better (up to 41%) AnTuTu 11 score – 516K vs 366K
  • Performs 25% better in floating-point computations

Benchmarks

Performance tests in popular benchmarks

AnTuTu 11

The AnTuTu Benchmark measures CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O performance in different scenarios
366515
A10 Fusion +41%
516981
CPU 134649 202669
GPU 37113 63274
Memory 87722 84317
UX 107031 166721
Total score 366515 516981
Samples Less than 3 Less than 3
AnTuTu results from iOS and Android are not directly comparable! They won't affect NanoReview scores.

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
403
A10 Fusion +119%
882
Multi-Core Score
1147
A10 Fusion +29%
1484
Asset compression 80.6 MB/sec 57.7 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 50.3 pages/sec 38.7 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 50.1 Mpixels/sec 44.8 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 11.8 images/sec 14.2 images/sec
HDR 36.7 Mpixels/sec 56.1 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 2.04 images/sec 4.38 images/sec
Photo processing 9.64 images/sec 13.5 images/sec
Ray tracing 978.5 Mpixels/sec 1.7 Mpixels/sec
Samples Less than 3 4 tests
Compute Score (GPU)
1191
A10 Fusion +265%
4352
Background blur 5.65 images/sec 11 images/sec
Face detection 3.43 images/sec 9.32 images/sec
Horizon detection 0.15 Gpixels/sec 0.13 Gpixels/sec
Edge detection 0.12 Gpixels/sec 0.17 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian blur 0.1 Gpixels/sec 0.4 Gpixels/sec
Feature matching 0.03 Gpixels/sec 0.04 Gpixels/sec
Stereo matching 10.7 Gpixels/sec 10.9 Gpixels/sec
Particle physics 410 FPS 415.5 FPS
API OpenCL Metal
Samples - 2 tests
Compute results use different APIs (Metal vs Vulkan/OpenCL) and are not directly comparable!

3DMark

A cross-platform benchmark that assesses graphics performance in Vulkan (Metal)
3DMark Wild Life Extreme
Score - 693
Stability - 85%
Graphics test - 4 FPS

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
HiSilicon Kirin 960
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2023-11-29 (antonio chen)GeekBench CPU403 / 1147
Apple A10 Fusion
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2025-08-15 (hellz1)GeekBench GPU4352
πŸ“˜ 2024-02-21 (Cap1bara_tech)GeekBench CPU882 / 1484

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of Kirin 960 and A10 Fusion

CPU

Architecture 4x 2.36 GHz – Cortex-A73
4x 1.84 GHz – Cortex-A53
2x 2.34 GHz – Hurricane
2x 1.05 GHz – Zephyr
Cores 8 4
Frequency 2360 MHz 2340 MHz
Instruction set ARMv8-A ARMv8-A
L1 cache 64 KB 64 KB
L2 cache 4 MB 3 MB
L3 cache - 4 MB
Process 16 nanometers 16 nanometers
Transistor count 4 billion 3.3 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) 5 W 5 W
Manufacturing TSMC TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Mali-G71 MP8 PowerVR GT7600
Architecture Bifrost 1st gen PowerVR Series7XT (Rogue)
GPU frequency 1037 MHz 650 MHz
Pipelines 8 6
Shading units 12 32
Total shaders 96 192
FLOPS 199.1 Gigaflops 249.6 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.3 1.1
OpenCL version 2.0 1.2

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) No No

Memory

Memory type LPDDR4 LPDDR4
Memory frequency 1600 MHz 1333 MHz
Bus 2x 32 Bit 2x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 28.8 Gb/s 14.9 Gb/s
Max size 4 GB 4 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type eMMC 5.1, UFS 2.1 NVMe
Max display resolution 2560 x 1600 2048 x 1536
Max camera resolution 2x 16MP 1x 32MP, 2x 12MP
Video capture 4K at 30FPS 4K at 30FPS
Video playback 4K at 30FPS 4K at 30FPS
Video codecs - H.264
- H.265
- VP8
- VP9
- H.264
- H.265
- VC-1
- Motion JPEG
Audio codecs - AIFF
- CAF
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV
- AAC
- AIFF
- CAF
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV

Connectivity

Modem - Qualcomm MDM9645M
4G support LTE Cat. 12 LTE Cat. 12
5G support No No
Download speed Up to 600 Mbps Up to 600 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 150 Mbps Up to 100 Mbps
Wi-Fi 5 5
Bluetooth 4.2 4.2
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo

Info

Announced October 2016 September 2016
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number Hi3660 APL1W24
Successor - HiSilicon Kirin 9000S - Apple A19 Pro

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
31 (59.6%)
21 (40.4%)
Total votes: 52

Comments

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