Huawei Mate 80 Pro performance review released! Kirin 9030 Pro shows significant improvement

Fast Technology reported that in November last year, Huawei released its annual flagship Mate 80 series, with the new phones being the first to be equipped with the Kirin 9030 and Kirin 9030 Pro chips.

More than half a year later, “Geek Bay,” one of Bilibili’s top 100 content creators, released a performance review of the Huawei Mate 80 Pro series, revealing more details about the Kirin 9030 Pro.

According to GeekBay, both Kirin 9030 series chips are based on the same die, with an estimated transistor count of about 15 billion, which is close to the level of Apple A15 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen2.

In terms of specifications, the Kirin 9030 Pro full-fledged version adopts a 9-core 14-thread CPU design, including one 2.75GHz super core, four 2.27GHz large cores and four 1.72GHz small cores, and is equipped with a 6-core Ma Liang 935 GPU.

GeekBay stated that the big and small cores of this generation of Kirin chips have not changed much, and the main upgrades are focused on the super core, including improvements in register depth and out-of-order execution window specifications, but the overall CPU still continues the architecture design of the previous generation Kirin 9020.

In terms of caching, the Kirin 9030 Pro’s new ultra-large core L2 cache has doubled to 2MB, the L3 cache shared by the 5 large cores has been upgraded from 10MB to 12MB, and the SLC cache has also been increased from 8MB to 12MB.

In the energy efficiency test, GeekBand specifically ported the native SPEC CPU 2017 test for the HarmonyOS system and combined it with the HiSmartPerf high-performance mode for testing.

Real-world testing shows that the Kirin 9030 Pro’s super core energy efficiency has steadily improved, and its performance has basically reached the level of the Cortex-X2 super core used in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+. Although it has not completely surpassed the X2, the gap is already very close.

GeekBay also pointed out that the Kirin 9030 Pro has made more significant progress in floating-point performance, and its mid-frequency energy efficiency is closer to that of the Snapdragon 8+ X2 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 X3.

In Geekbench 6 single-core benchmarks, the Kirin 9030 Pro scored 1866 points, while the Kirin 9030 scored 1808 points.

More noteworthy is that the Kirin 9030 Pro’s multi-core energy efficiency curve has fallen between that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 and Snapdragon 8 Gen3, and its mid-to-low frequency energy efficiency is even close to that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen3, representing a significant improvement over its predecessor, the Kirin 9020.

In terms of actual game testing, 
the Huawei Mate 80 Pro Max, equipped with the Kirin 9030 Pro, can achieve a smooth 60fps gameplay in the HarmonyOS native version of Genshin Impact at 804P resolution, outperforming Snapdragon 8 Gen3 models. The entire device consumes only 4.9W, and its energy efficiency is even better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 at 720P resolution.

With the 120fps ultra-high graphics settings in “Honor of Kings”, 
its average power consumption is only 3W, which is not only significantly stronger than Snapdragon 8 Gen3 models, but also comparable to Android flagships equipped with Snapdragon 8E5 and Dimensity 9500 this year.

In addition to gaming performance, GeekBay also mentioned that the Huawei Mate 80 series is smoother in terms of system and software smoothness than some Android models with higher hardware specifications.

GeekBay explains that Android apps are not only more bloated, but some phone manufacturers also limit app performance through whitelisting. This relatively “one-size-fits-all” strategy makes it difficult for Android flagships, even with stronger hardware, to fully utilize their capabilities in all scenarios.

In contrast, HarmonyOS has a more refined and intelligent scheduling strategy, which can better complement the Kirin 9030 chip.

Meanwhile, native HarmonyOS applications reduce the historical baggage accumulated by Android versions over a long period of time and are based on a more efficient development framework, thus having lower performance requirements.

In terms of battery life, the Huawei Mate 80 Pro has a built-in 5750mAh battery, while the Mate 80 Pro Max is equipped with a 6000mAh battery.

GeekBand’s 5G Battery Life 5.0 model test shows that both models scored 8.14 points, and their overall battery life performance has caught up with the mainstream level.

Overall, while the Kirin 9030 Pro still lags behind top-tier flagship chips in peak performance, the Huawei Mate 80 series, with its improved energy efficiency, gaming experience, system scheduling, and native HarmonyOS ecosystem, delivers a more mature and comprehensive user experience.