After the recent report that Samsung artificially inflates its benchmarking scores, the well-respected hardware review site, AnandTech, published evidence that suggests nearly all mobile manufacturers with the exception of Apple and Motorola use CPU/GPU optimizations to game a variety of benchmark tests. Samsung and other OEMs use a variety of methods to enhance device performance when a benchmark is detected. An example of this was seen with the Galaxy S4 device where it raised its thermal limits (and max GPU frequency) to get an edge on certain benchmarks and also raised its CPU voltage/frequency to its highest state when a benchmark was sensed. This tactic was discovered being used with multiple manufacturers including LG, HTC and ASUS as well.
AnandTech highlights devices that detect benchmarks and immediately respond with max CPU frequency. This can be seen in the table below:
The folks over at AnandTech wrote the following about the matter:
With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. It’s possible that older Motorola devices might’ve done the same thing, but none of the newer devices we have on hand exhibited the behavior. It’s a systemic problem that seems to have surfaced over the last two years, and one that extends far beyond Samsung.
The only realistic solution is to continue to evolve the suite ahead of those optimizing for it. The more attention you draw to certain benchmarks, the more likely they are to be gamed. We constantly play this game of cat and mouse on the PC side, it's just more frustrating in mobile since there aren’t many good benchmarks to begin with. […]
There's no single solution here, but rather a multi-faceted approach to make sure we’re ahead of the curve. We need to continue to rev our test suite to stay ahead of any aggressive OEM optimizations, we need to petition the OEMs to stop this madness, we need to work with the benchmark vendors to detect and disable optimizations as they happen and avoid benchmarks that are easily gamed.
There's no single solution here, but rather a multi-faceted approach to make sure we’re ahead of the curve. We need to continue to rev our test suite to stay ahead of any aggressive OEM optimizations, we need to petition the OEMs to stop this madness, we need to work with the benchmark vendors to detect and disable optimizations as they happen and avoid benchmarks that are easily gamed.
Those of you who are interested in reading more about the topic should hit the source link below. On that note, how do you feel about these manufacturers and what they are doing?
Source: AnandTech
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