Mobile SoC advice

[Rak]

Hello pep's

I'm looking to get a new shiny tablet for "research" and emulator gaming.

I read a ton about how important the choice of Cpu and GPU for Android emulators is but couldn't get a clear answer anywhere what the best choice is.

My current favorites:
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 value edition (snapdragon 652)
Samsung Galaxy Tab Se (Exynos 5433)
Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet (snapdragon 820)

It's basically down to a battle between Mali and Adreno GPU and there is the problem i can't find a clear answer for.

Who will run psx, psp, nds, gba, n64, ect the best?

Pleas help me find a satisfying answer!

 

[hotrob]

I've got a Note 4 with the Snapdragon 805, and pretty heavy into emulation. For psx (I recommend epsxe) and GBA (I use John GBA, but there's no real difference) basically anything that's relatively modern will do the trick. I can also confirm that anything stronger than a Nexus 5 will give a solid experience on a variety of games on PPSSPP (anything on this list SHOULD be fine, but I don't have firsthand experience with these SOCs).

Now, I've been out of the mobile game for a year or two, so I had to run through GSM Arena's benchmarks. For CPU, they should all be fine. The weakest appears to be the Exynos 5433, which is a bit stronger than my Note 4 which only struggles with NDS (I recommend paying for Drastic), and even then it's playable.

The S652 seems to fall behind on the graphics side of things, scoring a little over half of what the S810 scored.

If you're looking for the best experience, I'd go for the Xperia z4 (though GSM arena has it listed as having a Snapdragon 810, not an 820, the 810 is still the most powerful chipset of those listed). In addition, in my experience the Qualcom CPUs are consistently the best optimized.

That's my two Canadian cents worth anyways.