Exynos 2200 gaming tests on the S22 Ultra peg the AMD GPU as cool, weak, and frugal

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Samsung ships the Galaxy S22 Ultra with two new processors, depending on your sales region. It upgraded the Snapdragon 888 processor that is found in the S21 Ultra with a 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, but for the first time it’s the Exynos version of the S22 Ultra that is the more interesting one. 

In our tests below, it also performs slightly better on all counts than the Exynos 2100 in the S21 Ultra, too. What about the AMD graphics subsystem performance, though?

Exynos 2200 AMD GPU vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 gaming graphics benchmark test

Samsung’s latter days Exynos processor incarnations were marred by thermal and performance issues compared to their Qualcomm Snapdragon alternatives, chiefly on account of the stock ARM-Mali graphics Samsung used in the package. 

Well, sort of, in regards to frugality and keeping cool under pressure, but when it comes to performance, the mobile AMD GPU in the S22 Ultra gives way to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. 

Unfortunately, that 45% or so cut in average power consumption while gaming also meant that the Xclipse 920 mobile AMD RDNA2 architecture doesn’t give its best in terms of frames per second count. 

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phone mustered 48 FPS average, with some drops below 40 FPS, while the Exynos 2200 Galaxy S22 Ultra only managed 30.2 FPS on average, albeit keeping them pretty consistent throughout.

This might be a deliberate strategy by Samsung, as today’s mobile chipsets are plenty powerful enough and can easily be throttled under extreme pressure to achieve excellent power draw numbers with negligible loss in everyday performance, with Apple’s speedy A-series processors a prime example. Alternatively, Samsung might have unleashed the Exynos 2200 graphics subsystem in internal testing and determined that it may get hot and bothered if it maintains the cherished 60 FPS count for a sustained period of time, so it bet on stability rather than performance.

Exynos 2200 GPU battery life impact

The mobile AMD GPU, however, has other virtues than raw power frequencies, as it sports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and variable-rate shading features support, just like its desktop or console-level counterparts. Now if only we had an influx of mobile games that are able to take advantages of ray tracing, that would be swell.

As you can see from our battery benchmark test results here, the 3D gaming endurance of the Exynos 2200-laden Galaxy S22 Ultra is second to none among flagship Android processors and is on par with Apple’s A15 chipset graphics subsystem consumption on the iPhone 13 Pro Max which is a pretty amazing feat given that Apple controls both the hardware and software aspect on its phones and can optimize performance and power draw till the cows come home.

Long story short, while Samsung’s new Exynos 2200 chipset with AMD graphics won’t give you a record-breaking frames per second count while gaming, it will compensate with performance stability and frugal power draw that will have a positive effect on your phone’s battery life when playing heavy 3D games.