Kirin 9020 chip delivers far better gaming performance than Kirin 9010: Test

Huawei Mate 70 series chip is better than Kirin 9010 in many aspects, but it’s time to have a look at the Kirin 9020 gaming performance. Apart from regular functioning and fluency, the new chipset also shows “far better” gaming than its predecessors.

A Weibo tipster tested the Kirin 9020 chip’s gaming performance on multiple games. He used the Huawei Mate 70 Pro+ handset for an hour under 25 degrees Celsius.

The tipster played three main games on the Mate 70 Pro+: Honor of Kings, Genshin Impact, and Honkai Impact 3. The results in all of the games were quite surprising.

Starting with the Honor of Kings, the Mate 70 Pro+ gave an average frame rate of 119.4 FPS. It possessed a power consumption of 3.9W with a maximum temperature of 41.7 degrees Celsius. Overall, it supported 120 frames in HD display quality.

Huawei Mate 70 Pro+ performance in Honor of Kings (Image Credits: Weibo)

With Genshin Impact, the Kirin 9020 device offered a 50.9 FPS average frame rate, 5.6W power consumption, and 48.4 degrees Celsius device temperature. While playing Honkai Impact 3, the tipster noted a 30.8 FPS average frame rate, 6.1W power consumption, and a maximum body temperature of 50.4 degrees Celsius.

Huawei Mate 70 Pro+ performance in Ginshin Impact (Image Credits: Weibo)

Regarding app launching, the Kirin 9020-powered phone took 188 seconds to launch around 30 apps in two rounds (probably 15 apps in each round). Out of 30, 25 applications were constantly running live in the background for almost three hours.

Huawei Mate 70 Pro+ performance in app launch test (Image Credits: Weibo)

Results:

The tipster mentioned that the Huawei Kirin 9020 offers far better gaming performance than the Kirin 9010 chipset. It showed great functioning while opening and closing applications as well as playing high-definition games. But there’s a catch.

Kirin 9020 is still behind from Snapdragon 8 Elite. It brings improvements in frame rates, power consumption, and body temperature over Kirin 9010 but lags in performance when compared to the latest Snapdragon processor.

The chipset performed well in Honor of Kings. However, it showed a void for improvements in heavy gaming like Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3. It is worth noting that the chip showed impressive performance in app launching and drew level with iPhone 15 Pro Max.

In terms of Geekbench scoring, the Kirin 9020 chip single-core performance falls between Snapdragon 888+ and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Whereas, the multi-core scoring is between Dimensity 8300 and 9200 processors.

HuaweiCentral’s Take

The real-scenario testing of Kirin 9020 shows that though Huawei has made big strides in the chipset field in recent years, it has a lot of room for improvement.

Due to the US ban, the company is still struggling with the lack of advanced chipmaking tools which keeps it behind Snapdragon and Dimensity in terms of chip performance. Yet, the constant efforts hint that Huawei will soon match level with foreign chipmakers.