Realistic Performance Measures of "Modern" PowerVr/Mali GPUs on Android?

[Furby]

So, the talk lately of which Android GPUs are best for PPSSPP made we curious just how bad PowerVR/Mali processors really are.

I'm curious because my two devices, a Droid Bionic and a Nexus 10, use a powervr and Mali processor, yet run games very well given their specs (My bionic does 20-40 in game (Pretty much no matter the game), and the Nexus does 30-50 in more demanding games (With the less demanding ones being upper 50's or solid 60)).

To put it into perspective of what I'm trying to get at, I'm looking at getting a Galaxy S4 (The Quad Core Version with the Snapdragon 600 @1.9 GHZ) in the future, since the Note 3 probably won't be available by the time my current contract expires. I'm not looking to pull something like Tekken 6, Soul Calibur, or other games of that caliber on it, but I am looking at playing games like Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Class of Heroes, other games with 3D Environments but little 3D interaction.

I'm wondering if those sorts of games will pull off high or perfect speed on the Galaxy S4. I'm aware that expecting more demanding games to run at max is ludicrous, but I'm wondering if a GS4 couldn't pull those off.

TL;DR: Just how bad is the powervr/Mali for PPSSPP use, anyway?

[[Unknown]]

I don't know all the details here, but from what I do know, the biggest speed problem you could see is when shaders fail to compile (which is likely a driver bug.) When this happens, we fall back to software rendering which is much slower, but at least still renders things.

Here's a list of recent reports of games with bad shaders (not all of them are Mali or PowerVR):
http://report.ppsspp.org/logs/kind/39

For example, from that list these games are probably pretty slow on Mali:
MONSTER HUNTER PORTABLE 2nd G, Dante's Inferno™, God of War: Chains of Olympus, PES 2013, TEKKEN 6, TEKKEN DARK RESURRECTION, AKIBA'S TRIP, etc.

For the games like Trails in the Sky and Class of Heroes, you probably won't run into these problems, so that's good. The other problem is issues with alpha/color tests. It seems like due to some rounding issues, some things incorrectly display/don't display. We'll probably eventually find a good way to improve this, but right now that can lead to graphical issues on some devices.

I'm using an Adreno and it hasn't had these issues. But others have reported issues with e.g. Disgaea, and it really depends on whether the game uses it or not.

-[Unknown]

[Furby]

Funnily enough, I don't like (Or just haven't played) a single one of those games (Except for Final Fantasy I, but meh, It's not like there isn't 50 other ways to play that one)

Thanks, that gives me a good perspective on this whole thing. I'll be better suited picking up an S4 than waiting for a Note 3, I think, unless those reports of Samsung wanting to release it earlier to make up for the apparently disappointing S4 sales are true.

Out of curiosity for anyone with a more modern phone or device than the ones I mentioned: What kind of speed are you seeing with your devices?