Galaxy Mega 6.3 vs. Ascend Mate: Shadows of giants

Benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 comes with a Snapdragon 400 chipset, which is not up to par with the current flagships but performed very well against last year's flagships. It packs two Krait 200 CPU cores clocked at 1.7GHz and Adreno 305 GPU, plus 1.5GB of RAM.

The Huawei Ascend Mate relies on a homebrewed chipset, the K3V2, which uses four Cortex-A9 cores at 1.5GHz and a 16-core GPU of unknown design. It has more RAM, 2GB of it. Basically, it's very similar to a Tegra 3 or Exynos 4 Quad.

Single-core performance on the Krait core is better before even accounting for the clockspeed advantage, so it's no surprise the Galaxy Mega 6.3 easily takes this round. But Android has reached a point where it can successfully leverage multiple cores.

Despite the 2:1 core count advantage of the Ascend Mate, it can't score a multithreading victory. In fact, the Galaxy Mega 6.3 pulls well ahead in Linpack and has a slim lead in Geekbench 2.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  132
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  132
• LG Optimus G Pro
  147
• HTC One
  151
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  169
• 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
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  347
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  350
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  359
• Meizu MX 4-core
  362
• Nexus 4
  431

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  791
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  788
• 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 Mega 6.3
  400
• 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
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  161
• HTC One X
  160.9
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141.5

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  3324
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  3227
• LG Optimus G Pro
  3040
• HTC One
  2708
• Sony Xperia Z
  2173
• HTC Butterfly
  2143
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  1894
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  1725
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601

Moving on to full system tests, AnTuTu and Quadrant, the Huawei Ascend Mate and Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 trade victories. Both are towards the bottom of the pack, but even the year-old flagship Galaxy S III has slid down in the rankings.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  26275
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  24716
• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• LG Optimus G Pro
  20056
• HTC Butterfly
  19513
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  15714
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  13621

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  12446
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  12376
• LG Optimus G Pro
  12105
• HTC One
  11746
• Sony Xperia Z
  8075
• HTC One X+
  7632
• LG Optimus G
  7439
• Oppo Find 5
  7111
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  7059
• HTC One X
  5952
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  5916
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  5509
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5450
• Meizu MX 4-core
  5170
• Nexus 4
  4567

We're not quite sure what the GPU inside the K3V2 chipset of the Ascend Mate is, but it didn't do too hot in GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt and it failed to run 2.7 T-Rex properly (both in 1080p off-screen mode). The Mega 6.3 isn't far ahead in the Egypt benchmark, but it's on par with the Galaxy Note II and it did run the T-Rex bench.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  41
• HTC One
  37
• Oppo Find 5
  32
• Google Nexus 4
  32
• Sony Xperia Z
  31
• Sony Xperia ZL
  31
• Sony Xperia SP
  31
• Apple iPhone 5
  30
• LG Optimus G Pro
  30
• LG Optimus G
  21
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  17
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  15
• HTC One X
  11

While neither GPU offered playable framerate at 1080p, they were designed for 720p screens, like the ones on the Galaxy Mega 6.3 and the Ascend Mate. Here the difference in performance is almost double in favor of the Mega 6.3, which was very close to the 60fps software limit. The Huawei Ascend Mate, however, offered a 33.2fps average, meaning it dropped below the 30fps mark on several occasions.

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  59.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  57.1
• HTC One
  56.4
• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  55.5
• LG Optimus G Pro
  54.2
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  53.4
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3
• Oppo Find 5
  38.6
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  33.2

Finally, we get to web performance. With an advantage in single-threaded performance, the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 easily takes the win in SunSpider. Throw in some HTML5 stuff to render and the distance to the Huawei Ascend Mate gets smaller, but it's still ahead.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  804
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  810
• 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
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  1065
• HTC One
  1124
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1312
• Sony Xperia Z
  1336
• LG Optimus G
  1353
• HTC Butterfly
  1433
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  1741
• Nexus 4
  1971
• Oppo Find 5
  2045

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One
  2382
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  2060
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  2056
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  1887
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Oppo Find 5
  1658
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  1646
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1468
• Nexus 4
  1310

Winner: It's a clear-cut win for the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3. The only time the Huawei Ascend Mate came close was in the multithreaded CPU benchmarks, but even then it wasn't very convincing.

Аudio output

The two phablets are quite evenly matched in the first part of our audio quality test - when attached to an active external amplifier. The Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 holds a tiny advantage with its cleaner output and is also a bit louder even if both devices are average at best in that regard.

When we plugged in a pair of headphones, the gap between the two increased as the Huawei Ascend Mate allowed some intermodulation distortion to creep in, whereas the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 remained almost perfectly clean.

Here are the results so you can see for yourselves.

Huawei Ascend Mate frequency response

Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

Winner: The Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 snatches the victory here with its slightly cleaner output and somewhat louder output. The differences are pretty minor, though, and many won't be able to detect them with a naked ear.