Funkertosh

I have been using an HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2) since the demise of my beloved Nexus One (HTC Passion). It has been running extremely well and I’m pleased with it’s performance.

Sad Nexus One is sad

I am currently overclocking the processor to 1516 MHz. Battery life is stable and I have not noticed any negative side effects. Performance is leaps and bounds above the stock 800 MHz setting.

The 800MHz Snapdragon S2 (MSM7230) in this phone is very similar to other S2 class chips put in some of the more recent phones. I believe this is why it takes to overclocking so well. It has the same 45nm die size as all of the other Scorpion class processors and also shares the same Adreno 205 GPU.  Phones like the HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung Galaxy S II, and even the HTC Flyer tablet are all based on S2 series Snapdragon processors.

The processor in the Nexus One is a Snapdragon S1 1000MHZ (QSD8250) featuring a 65nm die and the Adreno 200 GPU. The upgraded Adreno 205 in the HTC Desire Z has a few improvements. These include Hardware-accelerated SVG and Adobe Flash and better shader-performance than the Adreno 200. It supports OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.3, Direct3D Mobile, SVGT 1.2, Direct Draw and GDI.

I ran a few benchmarks and you can find the results below. The performance is good enough to hold me off until the new quadcore chips are out or something else that catches my eye. Hardware limitations are my only gripe. An improved main camera and a front facing camera are two bullet points on my want list.

Quadrant

This is one of the most popular benchmark applications out there. It is in almost every phone review and online forums are littered with “post your quadrant scores” threads.

Quadrant Benchmark

AnTuTu Benchmark

This is a recent benchmark that I came across in a review. I really like that it also tests the SD card.

AnTuTu Benchmark

Linpack

Long time favorite in online review and forum debates. I only ran the single thread test on the phone. Multi-thread results were lower as to be expected for a single core chip.

Linpack Single Thread

Neocore

This is another benchmark that I learned about recently. I was reading a review on Engadget about the HTC Amaze 4G where this was mentioned.

Neocore Benchmark

For easy comparison here is a snippet from their review.

You want benchmarks, you say? Well, we’ve got ‘em by the loads. In the name of a fair fight, we’ve lined up these various CPU / GPU stress tests against Magenta’s own Galaxy S II variant. For Quadrant, Sammy’s beastie beat out the Amaze 4G, scoring 2,576 vs. 2,514. Linpack averaged about 51MFLOPS, easily topping the GSII at 42MFLOPS for single thread and, again, yielding 77MFLOPS vs 70MFLOPS in multi scoring. And the benchmark dominance continued on, with our handset’s Neocore score inching over the GSII’s 57fps at 59fps.