Published in PC Hardware

MediaTek leaks quad-, octa-core specs

by on28 October 2013

Keeping it cheap and cheerful

MediaTek’s weird A7 octa-core is set to launch next month, along with another cheap quad-core part. The final specs are now out, and since the new chips already appear to be getting plenty of love from phone makers, let’s see what all the fuss is about.

The quad-core MT6588 appears to be a revision of MT65xx parts used in countless white-box tablets and smartphones. It features four A7 cores clocked at 1.7GHz, a 400MHz clock bump, but it also brings other improvements, such as LPDDR 666MHz support and a new GPU, the Mali 450-MP4, clocked at 600MHz.

The MT6592 is definitely the more interesting of the two parts, as it’s an octa-core clocked at 1.7GHz. It packs the same GPU, clocked at 700MHz. The Mali 450 is basically a revamped Mali 400 and it is available in an eight-core configuration, but MediaTek went for the MP4. This is rather understandable as it appears the eight-core configuration doesn’t exactly deliver a twofold performance boost.

This cheap little chip is said to have more than 20 design wins already, including some from big players like Lenovo and Huawei. Now we can add Sony to the list, as it plans to use the MT6592 in its low cost Tianchi phablet.

It’s not a bad start for such an unconventional chip and it makes us wonder what exactly is MediaTek charging for this part? It is clearly cheap to produce, with eight tiny A7 cores and a relatively small GPU, hence it is much smaller than high-end or even mid-range SoCs used in most phones today.

More here.

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