While still behind Qualcomm and TSMC, Samsung’s chipset division is rapidly improving. The yield rate is much better than before, and reports claim around 70% for the 4nm process. This matches TSMC; Samsung could even beat TSMC’s yield rate for 3nm chips.
Since Exynos GPUs from AMD didn’t perform up to the mark on flagship phones, Samsung plans to use them on its mid-range phones instead. Since mid-range GPUs are mostly pretty weak, Samsung’s flagship GPUs can drastically improve the gaming performance of their mid-segment phones with Exynos processors.
There are many routes Samsung can take with this. We assume the A3X and A5X series will get a new Exynos chip with AMD GPUs and compete well with other phones’ GPU performance. This could come at inevitable price bumps, however. Samsung also has a very popular FE lineup of value flagships. The S23 FE could ship with the Exynos 2200 globally and the 8 Gen 1 SOC in the USA.
The Exynos 2200 has no cutting-edge tech, but the succeeding phone to the S23 FE- the S24 FE, could feature a new AMD GPU. This helps Samsung effectively test the AMD GPUs on their cheaper lineup and then port it over to the flagships if they perform well.
According to the leak, the improvements are mainly for the Image Signal Processors. The leak also tells us to tamper our gaming expectations, but it’s still better than mid-range graphics from MediaTek. The ISP improvements will massively boost the performance of the cameras, particularly in complex HDR scenes and video recording.
Samsung plans to apply mRDNA to the mid-range Exynos processors (Exynos 1480, 1430) set to be released next year. However, this is more focused on ISP rather than gaming. Please don’t have overly high expectations for gaming performance.
— Revegnus (@Tech_Reve) August 31, 2023
We didn’t expect Samsung’s partnership with AMD GPUs to benefit mid-range phones. This means that we won’t get Ray Tracing support since it makes no sense on phones with relatively weaker CPUs. The Exynos 1480 and 1430 will have potentially much better AI & ML for photography. Performance isn’t the main focus. Improving Machine Learning with this will make Samsung the benchmark for mid-range smartphone photography. The GPU will be a tweaked RDNA2 for their mid-range lineup, and it’s exciting to see where this partnership goes.
