[Honor 10 Guides, News, & Discussion] iamsabresh:
Analysis of GPU Turbo on the Honor 10

GPU Turbo technology by Honor & Huawei -

Intro -

GPU turbo is the latest in the line of innovations from Huawei & Honor to improve upon android and provide a better Gaming experience on their devices. CPU Turbo technology has also been announced with the launch of Honor Note 10 in China, but CPU Turbo and “the Nine” cooling system are a blog for another day (After the global launch at the end of August). In this blog, I will limit my review of GPU Turbo on the Honor 10, which is the first device from Honor to receive the tech via an OTA starting the 3rd of August, 2018.

[IMG="Honor 10 GPU Turbo (Img Source - Honor Global Twitter Post)"]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1j-33Y8i6l6meB9s0pNtXpNRZLvrcb-wG[/IMG]

Honor has launched quite a few devices in 2018 with HiSilicon’s latest and greatest, the Kirin 970. The Kirin 970, being based on the Cortex A73 and A53, with the Mali G72 MP12, falls behind when it comes to the modern Snapdragon 845 with its Adreno 630 GPU, considering most games are better optimised to run on Adreno devices. Honor / Huawei’s answer to level the playing field in terms of gaming is the GPU Turbo technology.

Essence of GPU Turbo –

GPU Turbo is basically a software based upgrade to Kirin based devices, that through certain tweaks improve the efficiency of the GPU. It is no way a FPS booster, but a software that stabilises GPU performance variations and reduce GPU battery consumption. It liaises between the app and the APIs that govern graphics (Graphics drivers) and identifies what graphics assets are to freshly loaded and what can be reused and hence can be used to reduce the GPU load and power consumption. Huawei has claimed a 60% performance boost and a 30% better battery efficiency. GPU turbo is rolling out to most of the Huawei & Honor devices released in the past 2 – 3 years and Huawei P20 series and Honor 10 would be the first in line to receive the updates in August.

GPU Turbo on the Honor 10

What changes have the GPU Turbo brought to the Honor 10’s gaming performance ? To understand this, we need to understand the caveats of the

GPU Turbo technology. The GPU Turbo technology requires the app or game to be optimised for the GPU Turbo tech and only then will there be a difference in performance. Currently only PUBG and Mobile Legends.

[IMG="PUBG Mobile (Img Source - Google Images)"]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BmhwKyNqyXJeEowsvUWaNP5vGsgknU4B[/IMG]

[IMG="Mobile Legends (Img Source - Google Images)"]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1B9caKHDv0AmyEx4L1-60lu9Z-kXtBAsF[/IMG]

Here is the review of GPU Turbo in terms of PUBG gameplay pre and post update –

Observations pre update –

W/O GPU Turbo

The framerates were 30 FPS give or take during the homescreen, but as soon as the match begins, the variations in FPS spiked. The FPS ranged from 15 to 32 FPS at different points in the game.

This gameplay is at Ultra settings at HDR, with the auto adjust graphics feature switched off to maintain a level base point and standard circumstances. The battery drain over an hour of PUBG gameplay was 28% at a constant CPU temperature of 42⁰C and a processor load of 18%.

[IMG="Pre GPU Turbo Framerate variations"]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aKIftq5wMKKLD4aX8iSvWsJMSnFoaoqc[/IMG]

Observations post update -

With GPU Turbo

The framerates didn’t improve any farther than 30FPS, but with the GPU Turbo, the framerate variations were next to none, with the framerates hovering near 30 FPS throughout the gameplay (+/- 3 FPS).

The battery usage for an hour of gameplay was 23% at a constant CPU temp at 40⁰C, with a processor load of 13%. That is impressive considering that it is the same hardware, but the numbers advertised by Huawei & Honor doesn’t seem to materialise under everyday conditions.

[IMG="Post GPU Turbo Framerate"]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ac1CphgoBy3oMY8-Qp89AdSIQ2eYUac-[/IMG]

[IMG="Post GPU Turbo System stats"]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1A_q_PLR6be8XlNWw0zayL4aSxw8IYC0_[/IMG]

Inference / Expectations –

Considering the fact that GPU Turbo is supported by two games as of now, Huawei & Honor have to push more developers to support their new tech and with the Note 10 on the horizon, introducing CPU Turbo, the gaming vision of Honor seems apparent. It is to be seen how mobile gaming would change as Qualcomm has announced similar CPU and GPU announcements for their SoCs.

- Tech Reviews by IamSabresh