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MediaTek Unveils New Helio G90 Series Chipsets – Focused on Gaming
August 1, 2019 Andrew Cheng

MediaTek just introduced two chipsets under the company’s new Helio G series: the Helio G90 and G90T. Essentially, these two SoCs are focused on delivering the best gaming performance…at an affordable price point.

While it remains to be seen which device will come with either one of these two chipsets, at least one phone maker is on board: Xiaomi. Given the specifications of the Helio G90 series, it could very well offer reasonably good gaming performance for budget-centric smartphones.

What differentiates the Helio G90 and G90T is merely the clock speed of both the CPU and GPU. The G90’s CPU cores max out at 2.0GHz, while the G90T is clocked ever so slightly higher at 2.05GHz. As for the GPU – which is a Mali G76 MP4 – it is clocked at 720MHz and 800MHz for the G90 and G90T respectively.

Much like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 and Huawei’s own Kirin 810 chipsets, the Helio G90 series also uses ARM’s Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55 CPU cores. Basically, you can expect similar performance from the G90 chipsets compared to its competition here, though we’ll have to wait until more benchmark results of the chips are available to be sure.

If we were to take MediaTek’s word for it, however, the Helio G90 series is supposedly up to 26% faster than the Snapdragon 730. Considering the fact that the Snapdragon 730 is one of the most popular upper mid-range chipsets in the market now, that’s certainly a bold claim. We’ll definitely put this claim to the test once we have the opportunity to do so.

But there is one area where the Helio G90 SoCs fall behind: they are still built on a 12nm process. Compared to the Snapdragon 730 (8nm) and Kirin 810 (7nm), the G90 chips won’t be quite as power-efficient. This, in turn, could result in worse battery life – in theory, anyway.

As the Helio G90 series is focused on gaming, it comes with MediaTek’s “HyperEngine” technology. It’s a suite of software optimisations to improve gaming performance, which isn’t unlike Huawei’s GPU Turbo tech. On top of that, MediaTek also says that the G90 chips can identify if the WiFi signal is weakening, in which case it will automatically switch to an LTE connection as backup.

MediaTek chipsets have always been found in more budget-friendly smartphones, so if the new Helio G90 series can provide good gaming performance for the money, the chipmaker could have a winner here.

The first smartphone to ship with MediaTek’s new Helio G90 chip will likely come from Xiaomi. The Chinese phone maker recently confirmed that a Redmi-branded smartphone will feature either one of the two new chips. Given Xiaomi’s competitive pricing – and the affordability of MediaTek’s chips – it should make for an interesting smartphone.

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