by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 7/26/2012 11:35:00 AM
Posted in Tablets , Tablets , Asus , Asus , Google , Google , Nexus 7 , Nexus 7 , android , android , Android 4.1 , Android 4.1

The SoC & Performance

While Amazon chose TI's OMAP 4 for the Kindle Fire, Google and ASUS picked arguably the second best SoC on the market today: NVIDIA's Tegra 3. Keep in mind that high-end ARM SoCs generally sell in the $14 - $25 range per chip, which a fabless semiconductor manufacturer has to split with a foundry. The result is a far cry from the margins NVIDIA is used to making on high-end discrete GPUs. I suspect a desire to make good use of all functional Tegra 3 parts that come back from the fab is the reason why we have so many variants of the Tegra 3.

To date we've seen three Tegra 3 SKUs used in tablets: T30L, T30 and T33. Factor in the smartphone SKUs (AP30, AP33) and it's already a pretty healthy collection for a single chip. The main differences between the 30L, 30 and 33 parts are voltages and clock speeds. I've shown this table in previous articles but I present it here again since T30L is what's in the Nexus 7:

NVIDIA Tegra 3
  CPU Cores Max CPU Clock (1 core active) Max CPU Clock (multiple cores) GPU Cores Max GPU Clock
NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T33) 4+1 1.7GHz 1.6GHz 12 520MHz
NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T30) 4+1 1.4GHz 1.3GHz 12 520MHz
NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T30L) 4+1 1.3GHz 1.2GHz 12 416MHz

The loss in performance compared to T30/T33 is marginal at best, at least for most consumer use cases. Four Cortex A9s running at up to 1.3GHz is definitely quick enough for the types of applications you'll run on the Nexus 7. Things can always be faster, but like the Kindle Fire's OMAP 4, the Nexus 7's T30L is good enough for now. Give it another year and we'll see something even faster at this price point. That's the downside of buying anything in the tablet/smartphone space these days unfortunately.

ASUS Android Tablet Memory Choices
  TF Prime TF Pad 300 Nexus 7 TF Pad Infinity
Memory Capacity 1GB 1GB 1GB 1GB
Memory Type DDR2-1000 DDR3L-1333 DDR3L-1333 DDR3-1600
Memory Bandwidth 4.0GB/s 5.3GB/s 5.3GB/s 6.4GB/s

ASUS selected 1GB of DDR3L-1333 memory for the Nexus 7. This gives it more memory bandwidth than any of the Transformer series of tablets, with the exception of the Transformer Pad Infinity. Since the Tegra 3 SoC only has a single channel memory interface, ASUS had to rely on higher frequency memory to deliver sufficient bandwidth.

Note that the browser performance tests below paint a very good picture for the Nexus 7's performance because Android 4.1 replaces the default web browser with Chrome, with a much faster javascript engine.

SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark 0.9.1

Rightware BrowserMark

The Display GPU Performance
nex 7 speaker by trajik78 on Thursday, July 26, 2012
my buddy at work just got his Nex7. it's great, but the speaker is REALLY REALLY bad. distorts even at low volume.
trajik78
RE: nex 7 speaker by rfdparker on Friday, July 27, 2012
I had the same issue. I tried a stereo audio test video from YouTube, and it seemed one of the pair of speakers had already blown on/before arrival, whilst the other was fine.

So I'm getting it swapped today.
rfdparker
I'm disappointed that micro SD slots seem to be disappearing from high profile Android devices and frustrating reviewers seem to skip over it. I can see why manufacturers want to take micro SD slots off devices but losing the slot is no benefit to consumers and being able to add lots of cheap memory to a device with an HD screen prime for video and games is useful.

John
Johnmcl7
I'd imagine google wants to try and sell people cloud storage rather than let them go and buy a micro sd card.
Wiggy McShades
Which makes no sense on a WiFi-only device.
mcnabney
Seeing how quickly my son's 8GB iPod touch filled up, I think they could have really used more memory. Web browsing and streaming is OK, but you won't be able to install very many games, or put a full music library on it. It can't be that much more expensive to add another 16 GB.
kmmatney
Frustrating? by EnzoFX on Thursday, July 26, 2012
What is there for a reviewer to talk about besides simply stating it doesn't have one? Which they all do. It doesn't have one, this you know already, you're either ok with it, or it's not for you. They know what they did and they still chose to do it. Get over it?
EnzoFX
To be honest, it's a bit unfair to knock on any Android Device for the lack of MicroSD card storage.

Dan Morrill of Google's Android Team explains why:
http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/11/18/impromptu-...

It has to do with how USB Mass Storage works and how Apps and Media mingle in the same storage when dealing with internal storage only.

Ideally, ALL Android devices should have SD Cards but Android hasn't matured in that department enough to have them on the Nexus Line.
Sined
As I read that, he says they don't have a microSD slot because it would make settings up things harder ("where does the camera save pictures, where should that app be installed?"). I am glad that I only have android devices with microSD slots. I don't agree with the dumbing down of options he wants. If I wanted that, I'd go with iOS. :-) Looks like I won't get any Nexus device any time soon.
Death666Angel
Samsung seem to do it right, the as the main 16gb mem (for example) is split norm 2gb and 12gb (that shows as an SD card)

and ones with an SD card slot are shown as an second SD card slot
leexgx
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