LG Optimus G Pro vs. Samsung Galaxy Note II: Sumo wrestling

Synthetic benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy Note II is powered by a Samsung-made Exynos 4412 Quad chipset with four Cortex-A9 cores clocked at 1.6GHz, 2GB of RAM and a Mali-400 GPU. In 2012 that was one of the fastest chipset available, but now it shows its age when compared directly to the Optimus G Pro.

Speaking of which, LG's offering boasts the brand new Snapdragon 600 chipset with four Krait 300 cores clocked at 1.7GHz, 2GB of RAM and the Adreno 320 GPU. With specs like that you would expect the phablet to wipe the floor with its competitor and that's pretty much what you'll get.

The Optimus G Pro came on top on the Benchmark Pi and Linpack tests, which are meant to judge single and multi-core performance respectively. The Galaxy Note II couldn't come close to its rival in either test.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• LG Optimus G Pro
  147
• HTC One
  151
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  305
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  330
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  350
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  359
• Meizu MX 4-core
  362
• Nexus 4
  431

Linpack

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G Pro
  743
• HTC One
  646
• Sony Xperia Z
  630
• HTC Butterfly
  624
• LG Optimus G
  608
• Oppo Find 5
  593
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  214.3
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• Meizu MX 4-core
  189.1
• HTC One X+
  177.7
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175.5
• HTC One X
  160.9
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141.5

The 5.5" LG flagship had excellent performance in the Quadrant compound benchmarks we ran, too.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• LG Optimus G Pro
  20056
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• HTC Butterfly
  12631

Quadrant

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G Pro
  12105
• HTC One
  11746
• Sony Xperia Z
  8075
• HTC One X+
  7632
• LG Optimus G
  7439
• Oppo Find 5
  7111
• HTC One X
  5952
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  5916
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5450
• Meizu MX 4-core
  5170
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  4814
• Nexus 4
  4567

We ran GLBenchmark off-screen, which means we're testing at a fixed resolution, which lets us test the raw GPU power. The Optimus G Pro and the Adreno 320 GPU residing in it didn't disappoint and offered nearly twice the raw power of the the Mali-400 GPU in the Note II. The again, given that the Galaxy Note II has less than half the pixels of its opponent, the real-life gaming performance is quite on par on those two (of course you'll be getting more detailed graphics on the Optimus G Pro).

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One
  34
• Asus Padfone 2
  31
• Oppo Find 5
  30
• LG Optimus G Pro
  29
• Sony Xperia Z
  29
• LG Optimus G
  29
• Apple iPhone 5
  27
• Nexus 4
  26
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15
• HTC One X+
  12
• HTC One X
  9

Next up are browser benchmarks, where the Samsung optimizations helped the Note II make up some ground. SunSpider is all about pure JavaScript performance and the Samsung phablet managed to beat its rival, scoring its first victory for the day.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Ativ S
  891
• Apple iPhone 5
  915
• Nokia Lumia 920
  910
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  972
• HTC One X+
  1001
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1011
• Motorola RAZR i XT890
  1059
• HTC One
  1124
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1312
• LG Optimus G
  1353
• HTC Butterfly
  1433
• Sony Xperia Z
  1906
• Nexus 4
  1971
• Oppo Find 5
  2045

Winner: LG Optimus G Pro. The Snapdragon 600 platform is way newer than the Samsung-made Exynos 4410, which has been around for more than a year now, and it clearly shows in the benchmark scores of the two. It is commendable, though, that the Galaxy Note II was able to successfully stand its ground in terms of JavaScript and graphics performance (the latter - thanks to its lower resolution).