[LG Optimus 4X HD] UIQrules:
Generally for 2d contexts and specific/limited "graphics card type" instruction sets, it's about the same. Even with the "3d" desktop in Android now, the chips typically perform the same, because they run very limited instruction calls in those contexts anyway.

The difference is if you imagined creating 3d contexts with menu-interfaces that did more complex math than you typically see. If you did that, the tegra design floors everything else. Because each core has local stores and local access to the graphics card instruction sets, it's possible to create things that would croak the bandwidth on a traditional "graphics card bus" solution. The same goes for brush and image filters that rely on access to stream processors. Here the tegra design is faster and more efficient than a linear one.

Lots of people insist that for example the Exynos really is faster than tegra, because the graphics card part very likely will on occasion at least benchmark better scores. But what is it you actually want on a mobile platform? Is it an extra module that can only run games, and which will drain your battery in record time? Or is it something that can give you relatively high performance, also on low clock-speeds and extremely low power-drains? Could be that's a legitimate pro/against argument for your typical use of the phone.

But my guess is that the very large advertising campaigns coming in behind Apple's and Samsung's solutions -- like you always see with Qualcomm and TI solutions -- isn't targeted at people who exclusively play PC ports of 3d games on their phones. So there's that.

Of course.. if you do buy EA games, and always play flash-ports or PC games. And really do jump through the roof if you can have one extra shader above an integrated graphics card from 2001 --- then those other platforms will be better picks. If that's the kind of programs and games you want to see - games and programs that can be ported as cheaply as possible from PC to mobile, to fund more cheap PC ports, etc. Then that's a great pick.

Objectively speaking, though, there's no doubt what you would choose if you picked a solution based on current software capabilities (photo-brushes, filters, etc. Along with video-playback, and so on). And when looking forward to OS-solutions with more integrated 3d options. There's just no contest from a technical point of view. There's just too much bull**** being said about mobile platforms and chips in the "tech-blogs" out there. No difference from how it was 10 years ago.

(edit: ...sorry about the tone of that post. But just to take one example of what I'm talking about. If you wanted to have a video-stream embedded in the UI from a web-component --- this is possible to do right now, no magic going on here. But if you wanted to use video-compression in a non-exclusive context, what happens is that you need to engage the graphics module, which already may or may not draw bandwidth over what is currently used. And then that may or may not actually work. The program just won't run properly, depending on what else is going on.

So you won't choose that solution for compatibility reasons. Either you pick a solution that doesn't use the graphics module capabilities in the first place. Or you choose an exclusive context instead. Which is kind of annoying from the perspective that ARM actually do provide embedded instruction sets on their chips...)