Qualcomm’s next generation S4 MSM8960 was put through its paces by PCmag and the new super-phone chip seems to be a very promising piece of silicon.

The MSM8960 is the first of Qualcomm’s next generation S4 series (Krait) chips and it is a 1.5GHz dual-core stamped out in 28nm. PCmag compared the new chip to Texas Instrument’s OMAP4460 of Galaxy Nexus fame and Nvidia’s Tegra 3, which we know from the Asus’ flagship Transformer Prime tablet.

The chip, stuck in a Qualcomm development platform rather than an actual product, was tested in AnTuTu, NenaMark2, Browsermark, SunSpider and CaffeineMark. The results? It managed to outpace the OMAP and Tegra in every single test, sometimes with a very wide margin. In SunSpider and Browsermark it was between 15 and 25 percent faster than the competition.

If you were expecting Nvidia to win back some dignity in graphics performance, think again. The S4 features Adreno 225 graphics and it outpaces Nvidia and TI in graphics tests as well. In NenaMark it scored 59.9, while Tegra 3 and OMAP4 managed 45.3 and 23.8 respectively. The only bench where the S4 lost to Tegra was AnTuTu.

The impressive results may sound a bit surprising, but it is worth noting that Qualcomm’s Krait architecture is loosely based on ARM’s A15 core, while Tegra 3 sticks with the old A9. TI’s next generation OMAP5 and Samsung’s Exynos 5250 feature a similar A15 dual-core layout, which means we can expect excellent performance from them as well.

More here.