Kirin 970 vs A11 Bionic
We compared the 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 970 (Mali G72 MP12) with the newer 6-core Apple A11 Bionic (Apple GPU) SoC. Here you will find the pros and cons of each chip, technical specs and comprehensive tests in benchmarks like AnTuTu and Geekbench.
Review
CPU Performance
Single and multi-core processor tests
Gaming Performance
GPU performance in games and OpenCL/Vulcan
Battery life
Efficiency of battery consumption
NanoReview Score
Overall chip score
Key Differences
Pros of HiSilicon Kirin 970
- Supports 95% higher memory bandwidth (29 against 14.9 GB/s)
- Has 2 cores more
- Performs 7% better in floating-point computations
Pros of Apple A11 Bionic
- Shows better (up to 36%) AnTuTu 8 score – 309K vs 227K
- Announced 1 year and 1 month later
Benchmarks
Geekbench 5 (Single-Core)
Geekbench 5 (Multi-Core)
AnTuTu Benchmark 8
Specifications
CPU
| Architecture | 4x 2.36 GHz – Cortex A73 4x 1.84 GHz – Cortex A53 |
2x 2.39 GHz – Monsoon 4x 0 GHz – Mistral |
| Cores | 8 | 6 |
| Frequency | 2360 MHz | 2390 MHz |
| Instruction set | ARMv8-A | ARMv8-A |
| L1 cache | 512 KB | 64 KB |
| L2 cache | 2 MB | 8 MB |
| Process | 10 nanometers | 10 nanometers |
| Transistor count | 5.5 billion | 4.3 billion |
Graphics
| GPU name | Mali G72 MP12 | Apple GPU |
| Architecture | Bifrost | - |
| GPU frequency | 746 MHz | - |
| Cores | 12 | 3 |
| FLOPS | 347 Gigaflops | 325 Gigaflops |
| Vulkan version | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| OpenCL version | 1.2 | 2.1 |
| DirectX version | 12 | 12 |
Memory
| Memory type | LPDDR4 | LPDDR4 |
| Memory frequency | 1833 MHz | 1866 MHz |
| Bus | 4x 16 Bit | 2x 16 Bit |
| Max bandwidth | 29 Gbit/s | 14.9 Gbit/s |
| Max size | 8 GB | 3 GB |
Multimedia (ISP)
| Neural processor (NPU) | Yes | Neural Engine |
| Storage type | UFS 2.1 | NVMe |
| Max display resolution | 3840 x 2160 | 2436 x 1125 |
| Max camera resolution | 1x 48MP, 2x 20MP | 2x 12MP |
| Video capture | 4K at 30FPS | 4K at 60FPS |
| Video playback | 4K at 60FPS | 4K at 60FPS |
| Video codecs | H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, VC-1 | H.264, H.265, Motion JPEG |
| Audio codecs | 32 bit@384 kHz, HD-audio | AAC, AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV |
Connectivity
| 4G support | LTE Cat. 18 | LTE Cat. 12 |
| 5G support | No | No |
| Download speed | Up to 1200 Mbps | Up to 600 Mbps |
| Upload speed | Up to 150 Mbps | Up to 150 Mbps |
| Wi-Fi | 5 | 5 |
| Bluetooth | 4.2 | 4.2 |
| Navigation | GPS, GLONASS, Beidou | GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo |
Info
| Announced | September 2017 | September 2018 |
| Class | Flagship | Flagship |
| Official page | HiSilicon Kirin 970 official site | - |
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- Apple A11 Bionic or Qualcomm Snapdragon 855
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- Apple A11 Bionic or Qualcomm Snapdragon 625
- Apple A11 Bionic or A10 Fusion