Samsung Delays Launch Of Exynos 2200 With AMD RDNA 2 GPU, Is It Cause For Concern?
It wasn't even a full two weeks ago when Samsung declared on Twitter, "The gaming marketplace is about to get serious." The tweet was in reference to its upcoming reveal of its "next Exynos with the new GPU born from RDNA 2," and we were told to "Stay tuned" for a January 11 unveiling. Well, January has come and gone without a reveal, so what gives?
A delay, obviously, but the bigger question is why did Samsung push back the launch of its Exynos 2200 hardware with RDNA 2 on board? The official answer is because, at the last minute apparently, the chip maker decided to hold off on revealing its next-generation silicon until the arrival of its Galaxy S22 series, which it stated in almost-as-many words.
"We are planning to unveil the new application processor at the time of launching a new Samsung smartphone," a Samsung Electronics official said, according to Business Korea. "There are no problems with the AP’s production and performance."
The latter half of Samsung's statement contains a curious qualifier, depending on whether you're willing to take the comment at face value or think it hints at something else. On one hand, it makes sense Samsung will hold off talking about the silicon until its Galaxy S22 series gets an official debut. Just like how Apple talks about its silicon when launching new iPhone devices.
Is The RDNA 2 Portion Of Samsung's Exynos 2200 Running Too Hot?
If that is the case, however, then why hype up a January 11 reveal on Twitter? It's a fair question because according to a prominent leaker on Twitter, Samsung is having trouble hitting its desired clock speeds on the GPU portion of its upcoming SoC. Have a look...
According to Ice universe (@UniverseIce), the baked in GPU is hitting 1,300MHz, which is below where Samsung wants it to be for its Exynos 2200 hardware. That claim came a day before the cancelled unveil. It's not been confirmed what kind of frequency Samsung is hoping to hit, but a number that's been thrown out there is 1,900MHz. If so, then it's easy to see why 1,300MHz wouldn't entice Samsung to show anything off just yet.
In an earlier tweet that has since been deleted, the leaker suggested the GPU performance was lacklaster compared to other chipsets.
in the now-deleted tweet, @UniverseIce claimed that performance results showed the graphics performance of the Exynos 2200 chip trailing behind MediaTek's Dimensity 9000, which is equipped with a Malig GPU, and falling way behind Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Apple's A15 silicon found in its iPhone 13 Pro.
The same leaker also posted some thermal claims over on Weibo...
According to the Google Translated text, the GPU is running too hot at 1,900MHz, 1,690MHz, and 1,490MH.
The leaker further states that Samsung has the RDNA 2 portion running at 1,290MHz, with the plan being to bump that up to 1,490MHz "to restore some dignity."
We have no way of knowing if these claims are true. If they are accurate, however, it could point to a cooling issue, buggy driver code, or something else.
All that aside, we're excited to see what RDNA 2 can bring to the Galaxy line when it does finally debut. It's an enticing proposition, especially if Samsung is being upfront about there not being any performance issues to speak of.
