Chipmaker MediaTek recently unveiled its newest product, a chipset aimed for the gaming smartphone market. Called the Helio G90, MediaTek's newest chipset aims to capture one of the fastest-growing niche in the smartphone market, gaming.
While some might say that MediaTek is a bit late into joining the mobile gaming fray, what is important now is that there is a growing competition in this segment of the hardware market. Qualcomm has already released at least two chipsets for the mobile gaming market. This first one is the Snapdragon 730G, which was specifically designed for gaming. The latest is the Snapdragon 855 Plus.
MediaTek is keeping its silence regarding the official specs of the Helio G90. The company is expected to reveal these information on July 30, as the company is slated for the official launch event of the chipset in Shanghai.
Despite this lack of information, it did not deter the tech community to speculate about the innards of this highly touted piece of hardware. As the name itself suggest, the Helio G90 might be related to another MediaTek chipset, the Helio P90. It is important to note here that the P90 has an octa-core processor composed of two Cortex-A75 chips and six Cortex-A55 chips. While that might be considered as a gaming spec on its own right, the fact that MediaTek is promising improvements on its new chipset means that the G90 will pack a little more power.
As for the graphics processing unit of the Helio P90, MediaTek opted to use the Imagination PowerVR GM9446 instead of the usual Mali units from ARM. Regarding the G90's GPU, many tech analysts are expecting MediaTek to pick up another ARM GPU for the upcoming chipset. Mali GPUs have significantly improved their performance over the past few cycles. The Mali-G76 and Mali-G77 are two of the most powerful GPUs as of this writing. Nevertheless, there is also the possibility of MediaTek sticking with Imagination's lineup given that the company has already launched its new lineup of Furian GPUs.
Despite the unprecedented rise of high-end mobile gaming, smartphone and hardware manufacturers have been criticized by the community for using standard chipsets that are also marketed for their non-gaming lineup. The community has been asking for chipsets that are specifically designed for gaming. With Qualcomm's gaming-branding Snapdragon lineup and MediaTek's upcoming Helio G90, the community may finally have their wish granted.
