MediaTek caught cheating in Benchmarking tests

[Ink]

Content source

https://www.androidcentral.com/benchmarks-are-horrible-way-gauge-performance-smartphone-and-heres-why

Usually, it's the phone makers doing the cheating. Not this time.

AnandTech is a media outlet that does a lot of benchmarking. And I mean a lot — it benchmarks almost any product with a processor and noticed some strange goings-on with MediaTek devices.

[..] This round of benchmark cheating isn't being done by phone makers; it's being done by the company that makes the actual chip: MediaTek. The configuration files that force a potentially unsafe high-performance mode during benchmark tests are in the actual board support package provided by Media Tek to phone makers.

Here's how this cheating works, in case it all sounds like gibberish to you. MediaTek keeps a list of popular benchmark apps. When a user runs one of these apps, MediaTek lets the processor run as fast as it can, allowing it to get much hotter than normal and allowing the memory controller to run as fast as possible before it is slowed down.

 

[scorpionv]

Great job from Anandtech to expose this benchmark cheating, and confront MediaTek with it.

It's a lot like the Dieselgate from Volkswagen, with Volkwagen being MediaTek, and Audi, Seat and Skoda being Sony, Xiaomi and Oppo.

You can do amazing things with software, but this is amazing in the wrong way.