AnTuTu 4, Basemark OS II, And Geekbench 3
AnTuTu 4
AnTuTu is an Android system benchmark designed to test the performance capabilities of four major aspects of mobile devices: Graphics (encompassing 2D, UI and basic 3D), CPU (fixed, floating-point, and threading), RAM (read and write), and I/O (read and write).
It’s disappointing to see the Z2’s Snapdragon 801 right at the bottom of the pile. However, as a pre-production model, this Z2 could have some performance issues that are yet to be ironed out. After all, the RAM score is clearly lower than what the Nexus 5 achieves, and on paper, the Xperia Z2 should benefit from quicker memory.
Basemark OS II
Rightware is an experienced multi-platform benchmark developer. The company leverages this experience with Basemark OS II, an all-in-one tool designed for measuring overall performance of mobile devices. The test is available on all major smartphone platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 8. Basemark OS II uses a similar approach to Geekbench, but focuses on more application-specific areas, particularly User eXperience (UX), Web browsing, and rendering performance.
Even though it remains quite clear that this particular Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet has a memory performance issue potentially affecting other sub-tests, this metric appears to better-exploit the Snapdragon 801’s improved GPU core speed. In that one metric, it easily bests the older Snapdragon 800 in Google's Nexus 5 and Samsung's Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4.
Geekbench 3
Primate Labs’ Geekbench is somewhat of an industry standard due to its long-standing database and wide cross-platform compatibility (Windows/OS X/Linux/iOS/Android). This benchmark produces two sets of scores: single- and multi-threaded. For each, it runs a series of tests in three categories: Integer, Floating Point and Memory. The individual results are used to calculate category scores, which in turn generate overall Geekbench scores.
The Xperia Z2 is in last place, and we see that memory performance is what's holding it back...again. In fact, the Z2’s single-core RAM performance is about 29% of the Nexus 5's. At least for now, we have to hope that this pre-production unit is deliberately hobbled, and that retail samples will better-represent the Snapdragon 801's potential.
It's doubtful that more threads vying for limited throughput will fare better than a single active core, but let's run the numbers anyway.
As we guessed, the situation doesn't improve; low memory bandwidth pulls down platform performance dramatically. Based on its specifications, the Snapdragon 801 should at least put Sony's Xperia Z2 up with the Nexus 5, if not Samsung's Galaxy Pro 8.4.
