Recognition: David Imel / Android Authority
- The Pixel 5 has reportedly received a significant performance boost from the GPU with the latest update.
- Benchmarks performed by various testers show significant gains compared to previous results.
Turns out the April security patch isn’t the only thing to look forward to in Google’s latest Pixel update. Multiple reports now suggest that the Pixel 5 is seeing some impressive performance gains on the GPU after the new update.
The phone powered by Snapdragon 765G previously had much weaker results in GPU benchmarks conducted by AnandTech. After the last update, the reviewer of the publication Andrei Frumusanu says That performance on Pixel 5 has “essentially doubled”.
Andreas Proschofsky, Editor at The standard also repeated some benchmarks on the phone and found that the results are “30-50 percent better” than in March.
Before the update, his Pixel 5 scored around 2278/2260 points in the graphics performance tests in 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme. After installing the update, the phone scored 3286/3083 points in the same test.
Of course, benchmarks don’t always result in real performance. Google mentioned in its update changelog that it is introducing “performance optimization for certain graphics-intensive apps and games”. However, we didn’t find any testers mentioning specific games or apps that work better because of the update.
One theory Proschofsky has is that Google likely did some kind of throttling earlier because the Pixel 5’s GPU performance was always below expected results for Snapdragon 765G phones. People at XDA developer investigate what really caused the benchmark regression. We’ll update this article when we know more. In the meantime, get the update and let us know in the comments section if you notice any actual differences.