GPU Performance
GFXBench Offscreen – T-Rex
The T-Rex test is based on OpenGL ES 2.0 and includes textures, material, geometry and particle effective that were highly detailed at the time of release. The graphics rendering engine features planar reflection, specular highlights and soft shadows, providing a good workout even for flagship smartphones and tablets. Offscreen tests are run at 1080p, regardless of the device’s native resolution, and are best used to compare the performance between competing silicon, not competing devices.
The PowerVR G6430 inside the Atom Z3580 starts out with a mediocre result, a score of 1728 that is just barely faster than that of the Apple A7 GPU. Both of the Tegra K1 platforms and the Apple A8X are clearly faster on the GPU front.
GFXBench Offscreen – Manhattan
Manhattan was the first benchmark to utilize OpenGL ES 3.0 features and uses a nighttime setting with a lot of external illumination to stress the GPU. It uses a deferred rending engine with multiple render targets for the geometry pass, includes both diffuse and specular lighting, uses depth shadow maps, bloom, depth of field and quite a bit more.
Things don’t really look any better after moving to the OpenGL ES 3.0 test here – the Atom Z3680 is slower than all four of the other tablets tested here today.
GFXBench Offscreen – ALU Performance
This test measures the pure shader compute performance using a fragment shader and rending a single full-screen quad.
Raw ALU results keep the PowerVR graphics architecture where you’d expect it, slower than the Kepler-based graphics from NVIDIA and behind Apple’s latest architecture in the A8X.
GFXBench Offscreen – Alpha Blending Performance
Rendering semi-transparent quads with uncompressed textures allows this test to measure the alpha performance of the GPU directly.
Alpha blending performance is similar between the A7, the Atom Z3580 and the Tegra K1 Denver part with only the A8X running away with a synthetic performance victory.
GFXBench Offscreen – Driver Overhead
This test renders a large number of very simple objects one-by-one, changing state with each item in a pattern consistent with real-world applications. This allows the benchmark to measure the CPU overhead of the OpenGL driver.
Not a good result in the driver overhead result either where the benchmark attempts to measure how much compute overhead there is to manage the GPU pipeline.
GFXBench Offscreen – Fill Rate Performance
The portion of the test measures texture fill rate performance by rendering four layers of compressed textures, a very common scenario in gaming.
Finally we get to the fill rate that finds the Dell Venue 8 7000 comfortable towards the bottom of our test results yet again. Clearly the PowerVR graphics at work on the Atom lineup isn’t capable of raw performance that impresses.
GFXBench – Native Resolution
All of the above tests were run at 1080p to compare the performance of the GPU systems on equal ground. But tablets are not equal ground – the displays that are part of the platform different from unit to unit and that resolution can and does directly impact perceived GPU performance. Take the 2560×1600 resolution screen of the Dell Venue 8 7000 and compare it to the 1920×1200 screen on the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet. We have already determined that the SHIELD has a better GPU overall, so putting a higher relative load on the PowerVR graphics in the Atom Z3580 (via additional pixels to render) should result in an even bigger swing in these benchmarks.
That proves to be the case in the Manhattan test where the Dell Venue 8 7000 falls from a score of 743 frames to 436 frames, a drop of 70%. The SHIELD Tablet however drops from 1946 frames to 1868 frames, only a 4% drop. Both the iPad Air 2 and the Nexus 9 see larger drops as well with higher than 1080p native screen resolutions (33% and 44% respectively).
Use 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited for chip-to-chip comparisons of the hardware inside your device without vertical sync, display resolution scaling and other operating system factors affecting the result. In Unlimited mode the rendering engine uses a fixed time step between frames and renders exactly the same frames in every run on every device. The frames are rendered in 720p resolution "offscreen" while the display is updated with small frame thumbnails every 100 frames to show progress.
Ice Storm Graphics test 1 stresses the hardware’s ability to process lots of vertices while keeping the pixel load relatively light. Hardware on this level may have dedicated capacity for separate vertex and pixel processing. Stressing both capacities individually reveals the hardware’s limitations in both aspects. Pixel load is kept low by excluding expensive post processing steps, and by not rendering particle effects.
Graphics test 2 stresses the hardware’s ability to process lots of pixels. It tests the ability to read textures, do per pixel computations and write to render targets. The additional pixel processing compared to Graphics test 1 comes from including particles and post processing effects such as bloom, streaks and motion blur. The numbers of vertices and triangles are considerably lower than in Graphics test 1 because shadows are not drawn and the processed geometry has a lower number of polygons.
The purpose of the Physics test is to benchmark the hardware’s ability to do gameplay physics simulations on CPU. The GPU load is kept as low as possible to ensure that only the CPU’s capabilities are stressed. The test has four simulated worlds. Each world has two soft bodies and two rigid bodies colliding with each other. One thread per available CPU core is used to run simulations. All physics are computed on the CPU with soft body vertex data updated to the GPU each frame. The background is drawn as a static image for the least possible GPU load. The Ice Storm Physics test uses the Bullet Open Source Physics Library.
Here’s an interesting result – in 3DMark the Dell Venue 8 7000 is nearly on par with the iPad Air 2, but falls behind the Tegra K1 devices with the obviously superior Kepler graphics core.
Looking at the raw GPU scores though, the Atom Z3580 still has a fairly low result, barely edging out the Apple A7 in the iPad Mini Retina and scoring 87% lower than the Denver-based Tegra K1 Nexus 9.
But here is where the Atom processor and Silvermont architecture see some benefit – the CPU based physics test of 3DMark Ice Storm mobile suite puts the quad-core Intel x86 processor at the top of the stack, above even dual-core Denver CPU from NVIDIA.
Basemark X is the world’s most popular benchmarking tool for evaluation and cross-platform comparison of gaming and graphics performance between Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 smartphone and tablets.
Basemark X is the only vendor-independent benchmark that utilizes the real-world game engine Unity which is very popular among game developers. This means that it scores correlate exceptionally well with real-life gaming performance.
Basemark X includes two game-like graphics tests: Dunes and Hangar. Both tests contain heavy graphics content rendered with detail and complexity, thus pushing the measured device to the limit. The polygon counts in test sequences are up to 911,000.
The Basemark X results put the Dell Venue 8 7000 at the bottom of the pack, even below the iPad Mini Retina.
Basemark OS II is a system-level All-In-One benchmarking tool designed for measuring overall performance of smartphones and tablets from all platforms, including Android, iOS and Windows phone 8.
The benchmark features a comprehensive suite of tests including system, internal and external memory, graphics, web browsing, camera, battery and CPU consumption.
Finally, in the Basemark OS II Graphics sub-test we find the PowerVR graphics matching the performance of the A7 but falling woefully behind all of the other competitors.
I don’t know about perfected,
I don’t know about perfected, MKBHD gave it a lukewarm review.
That’s why we are allowed to
That's why we are allowed to have more than one review of a product. 🙂
Look ’em right in the eye,
Look ’em right in the eye, say “Flagship? 16GB?” and make them eat the damn thing.
I’ll take a look when if and when they ship a 32GB model, but they should never have shipped a 16GB model.
I don’t really disagree, but
I don't really disagree, but all flagship tablets at least come in a 16GB variety.
Yeah, I know. It’s just so
Yeah, I know. It’s just so annoying. Fabulous screen, fast CPU, plenty of RAM, decent battery life, everything is good…
And then the same 16GB of storage as we had in 2012.
Kind of agree there. Does the
Kind of agree there. Does the SD card slot not alleviate this?
To a degree.
The problem is,
To a degree.
The problem is, Android 4.4’s support for removable storage is… Not great. I have an Xperia Z Ultra with 16GB internal and a 128GB Sandisk micro SD card.
The SD card is brilliant. I have a ton of music on there, all the recent episodes from podcasts I follow (including yours, of course!), and a nice collection of audiobooks.
But my apps have to live on the internal storage. So do all my Kindle books.
I’ve been very selective about which apps I install, but I’m down to about 3GB of space on the internal storage. I have 50GB free on the SD card, but I can’t use it for that.
Android 5.0 might be better with SD cards, but I only have it on my Nexus 7 so far, so I can’t test that.
Given that we’re talking about a $400 device, and the price difference between 16GB and 32GB of decent quality Flash storage is $10 retail – and that it would more than double available space because at least 4GB is used by the OS and restore volumes – this ongoing insistence on providing inadequate storage even on flagship devices is really starting to piss me off.
Good point. I’ve lived that
Good point. I’ve lived that too. And considering that they can put 512GB on a micro SDs and M2s, there is little reason why they can’t build that much into these.
Also, considering that this is a recent “flagship” release I’m assuming that the MicroSDs supported are UHS-IIs. I think SDIO may cover the whole lot.
its a pretty steap price for
its a pretty steap price for a tab without lte, only 16 gb onboard storage and a unpractical design. i use my tab only in landscape mode and the single bezel on this tab looks unhandy.
the only plus on this tab is the screen.
but lets talk about the most disappointing part of this tablet. it comes with an outdated version (4.4) of android.
the bottom line for me is:
-expensive
-outdatet software
-lack of featuers
-no ergonomic way to use it
for the same price, you can get a nvidia shield with lte, 32 gb storage, more gpu power, up to date android 5.0.1, a bezel on all sides to get a grip, faster charging times, yes the dell loads rly slow! only the screen on the shield is not so fancy.
so, no.
wont buy. 400 for only a nice screen is too much dell.
you can get for around 230 an
you can get for around 230 an memo pad from asus http://www.asus.com/Tablets/ASUS_MeMO_Pad_7_ME572CL/specifications/ also has lte and most of the stuff you need, well not such a fancy screen, also an outdatet android, probably a bit slower in performance and so on.
also the Lenovo Tab S8-50L LTE http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/tablets/lenovo/s-series/s8/#tab-features way less expensive and comes with an lte modul for about 230.
so, a fancy screen costs 170 bucks?
i cant rly understand the excitement.
In many cases, a tablet and
In many cases, a tablet and phone is more about the experience and build quality than specs. Still, I am trying to get these tablets in currently! Thanks for the heads up!
Great review Ryan, and yet
Great review Ryan, and yet another example of why I always check PCPER before buying a piece of tech. Was there any indication that we might expect an LTE variant? With LTE, 32GB and a 256GB SD, this could contend with laptops!
LTE hasn’t been mentioned at
LTE hasn't been mentioned at all yet.
Also wondering what class of
Also wondering what class of MicroSD is supported.
Oh, sorry!
SD, SDHC, SDXC,
Oh, sorry!
SD, SDHC, SDXC, supporting up to 512GB
Good review Ryan . thanks
Say
Good review Ryan . thanks
Say what you will re price and deficiencies and lollipop delay.
I am using this tablet and the screen is as good or better than the rest
No regret
Paul
I swear that when they
I swear that when they unveiled this device at IDF last fall, it was using Cherry Trail, not Bay Trail… hmm…
Nope, it was always Atom
Nope, it was always Atom Z3500 – http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/09/09/michael-dell-previewed-world-thinnest-tablet-at-intel-developer-forum
16GB of
16GB of storage?
whatyearisthis.jpg
😀
Almost all tablets start
😀
Almost all tablets start 16GB honestly though. I would agree Dell needs more options.
Shame you didn’t take the 8″
Shame you didn’t take the 8″ galaxy tab s along in this compassion. Half curious if it uses the same panel.
Totally agree there.
Totally agree there. Hopefully Samsung will be willing to send us one to compare!
Do you know who supplies the
Do you know who supplies the OLED screen? Was it Samsung? The Samsung Tab S are also OLED and have been reviewed as having the best display out of the tablets currently available. The other internals are a bit more dated however.
I believe another review
I believe another review mentioned it’s probably the identical screen as what is found in the Samsung.
I believe another review
I believe another review mentioned it’s probably the identical screen as what is found in the Samsung.
This review was almost enough
This review was almost enough to get me to purchase this since I’m looking for a new small tablet for my wife after her Memo Pad 7 gave out (just stopped charging), but the Amazon reviews for this are horrible. Great review though … thanks!
Amazon doesn’t sell this
Amazon doesn't sell this tablet, so I don't know what reviews you were looking at…
Purchased this last night
Purchased this last night based on your review.
I’ve had probably a dozen different tablets over the years starting with the first Tegra 2 tablet that I could find (Viewsonic G-Tab) which had the most horrible screen on any device I’ve ever seen.
This one, by contrast, has the best screen I’ve seen on any device. The 3D cameras are uncalibrated out of the box and aren’t all that accurate for the 3D functions, but the software assures me it will get better as I take more photos. It’s not the fastest tablet I’ve used I don’t think, especially in the GPU department, but it’s more than adequate. The build quality is as good as any other I’ve had and better than most. Only the ASUS 10″ tabs come close in comparison to ones I’ve owned.
What it does well, it does VERY well. What it doesn’t, it does well enough to make me believe it’ll keep the top spot on my tablet list for a while.
Going from android 4.4.4 to
Going from android 4.4.4 to android 5 is a huge upgrade performance wise.I own a nexus 4 and it shouldn’t go up so much in performance usually but google has been fine tuning a lot on. The performance side
I felt this thing at Best
I felt this thing at Best Buy, and it is absolutely fantastic to hold. Very thin and it feels like a piece of metal.
My only disappointment is KitKat rather than Lollipop, but I understand the optimizations that must happen. After using Lollipop on my phone now since it was released, KitKat feels like something of an eyesore.
Great review Ryan!
32G came out this week. I am
32G came out this week. I am looking forward to mine arriving 🙂
Having used the 32G version
Having used the 32G version now for several weeks I can say I really really am liking this tablet. Gorgeous screen..it took a couple days to get used to the button location on the left side, but I am fine with them now. Very responsive. I would like to see lollipop soon, but it’s easily my favorite tablet.
Anyone know if the Venue 8
Anyone know if the Venue 8 7840 is fitted with Gorilla Glass? Or anything similar to prevent scratches and breaks?
The tablet scene seems a bit
The tablet scene seems a bit quiet lately outside launches of some larger ‘Pro’ models. I guess tablet sales are a bit soft globally. My 2011 iPad 2 was gimping too badly so I just bought this Dell Venue 8 7000 32GB. Great price discounts are had on it now that it is a year old and it now comes with Lollipop 5.02 that immediately upgrades to 5.1. I would expect an Android 6.0 Marshmallow upgrade over the next 3 months.
Having owned a tablet for years I’m somewhat past the experimentation thing with a gazzillion apps and games and quest for the ultimate specs. I now am more a user of the core types of apps someone uses with a tablet. As a result, my main goals in a tablet are great screen display/readability, snappy and fluid transitions, smooth browsing/reading, smooth video streaming, excellent build quality, excellent battery life, excellent physical usability and overall visual coherence.
This tablet really nails it on most dimensions I’m looking for. As someone else mentioned, where it misses dead center, its definitely good enough. The revue above does a good job of capturing the nuances. I’m sure over time Google will make the Android OS more complex, forcing hardware end-of-life… but for me, Lollipop + Venue 8 addresses all my needs in a tablet already. Marshmallow, if/when it arrives to the V8, will only further improve the SD card functionality in this device. I’m hopeful Dell WON’T keep forcing OS upgrades to this device, making it gimpy, like Apple did to my iPad 2.