ARCHOS 97 Titanium HD quick review – part 2 performance (comparing with Onda V972 / ARCHOS 97 Platinum)

Part 1: IntroductionPart 2: Performance and comparison with Onda V972 tablet

With the 97 Titanium HD, ARCHOS took the challenge to integrate a middle end Rockchip RK3066 processor (as of early 2013 standards) with a high resolution (2048×1536) display. The tablet operates two display modes, a “normal mode” with 1600×1200 resolution and an “HD” mode with 2048×1536. We’ll see from the benchmarks and user experience that the device really offers mixed results based on the device resolution.

ARCHOS 97 Titanium HD benchmark results vs Onda V972

Test conditions:
- ARCHOS 97 Titanium HD retail device with firmware build dated 2013/01/24
- all benchmarks were executed after all tasks have been killed
- test were run multiple times to check for consistent behavior, the results shown here correspond to average values

ARCHOS 97 Titanium HD vs Onda V972 benchmark results

	ARCHOS 97 Titanium HD		Onda V972
Display mode	Normal (1600×1200)	HD (2048×1536)	HD (2048×1536)
Test setup Firmware version	stock firmware Linux version 3.0.8+ (cdy@mid-server) #398 SMP PREEMPT Thu Jan 24 20:11:25 CST 2013 Android 4.1.1 Build archos/RK30A97TIHD/A97TIHD:4.1.1/ JRO03H/20130130.111032:user/release-keys		stock firmware Linux version 3.3.0 (lgm@SzExdroid5) #3 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 4 11:38:13 CST 2013 Android 4.1.1 onda/fiber_onda978q9/fiber-onda978q9:4.1.1/ MASTER/20130204:user/test-keys
Antutu Benchmark v3.1.1 higher is faster	Total score: 9808 RAM: 1278 CPU integer: 2291 CPU float-point: 1827 2D graphics: 1026 (1152×1464) 3D graphics: 2688 (1152×1464) Database IO: 560 SD card write: (8.6 MB/s) 86 SD card read: (5.2 MB/s) 52 CPU frequency: 1608 MHz (x2)	Total score: 7953 RAM: 1808 CPU integer: 2440 CPU float-point: 420 2D graphics: 663 (1536×1952) 3D graphics: 1902 (1536×1952) Database IO: 560 SD card write: (10.5 MB/s) 105 SD card read: (5.5 MB/s) 55 CPU frequency: 1608 MHz (x2)	Total score: 10736 RAM: 1480 CPU integer: 2894 CPU float-point: 1840 2D graphics: 866 (1536×1952) 3D graphics: 2804 (1536×1952) Database IO: 500 SD card write: (27.4 MB/s) 150 SD card read: (>50 MB/s) 202 CPU frequency: 1008 MHz (x4)
Linpack Pro v 1.2.9 higher is faster, benchmark run in multi-thread (we took the best numbers we could achieve, there is a lot of variance on these bench results)	84.63 MFLOPS	79.373 MFLOPS	96.546 MFLOPS
CF-Bench v1.2 higher is faster	Native score: 15055 Java Score: 4658 Overall Score: 8816	Native score: 14783 Java Score: 4603 Overall Score: 8675	Native score: 17540 Java Score: 3329 Overall Score: 9013
ArcTools v 0.76 higher is faster	Read: 22677 Kb/s Write: 7952 Kb/s	Read: 23163 Kb/s Write: 7141 Kb/s	Read: 24725 Kb/s Write: 10576 Kb/s
Quadrant Pro v2.1.1 higher is faster	Total: 4220 CPU: 7883 Mem: 4561 I/O: 5640 2D: 765 3D: 2250	Total: 3460 CPU: 7773 Mem: 3877 I/O: 4025 2D: 368 3D: 1257	Total: 3131 CPU: 7518 Mem: 1791 I/O: 3125 2D: 971 3D: 2252
Vellamo v 2.02 higher is faster	HTML5: 1576 Metal: 536 (ran in portrait mode)	HTML5: 1313 Metal: 520 (ran in portrait mode)	HTML5: 1025 Metal: 358 (ran in landscape mode)
EPIC Citadel version 1.05 Benchmark run in high quality mode performance level rendering resolution 100% higher is faster	40.5 FPS (1536×1080)	37.9 FPS (2048×1440)	42.5 FPS (2048×1440)

On the 97 Titanium HD benchmark results, we can observe that the numbers are usually higher in Normal mode compared to HD mode (2048×1536 pixels resolution) which is not really surprising, knowing the tablet processor and architecture wasn’t really designed for such high resolutions. While the results in both resolution show a decent performance compared to other middle range tablets, it doesn’t really reflect the user experience, especially in HD mode where the Android system reacts quite slowly. Touch inputs may take a second or two before the tablet reacts, which is really disturbing for a daily use in high definition.

The following two videos were shot on the stock firmware version, the lag in the Android interface and frame skipping in the video player are easily noticed. The situation has improved a bit since latest firmware update, but there it is still far from being smooth.

In addition to the lag, there is also an unpleasant screen flicker in HD mode, you can clearly see it in our NenaMark2 benchmark video.

Comparing the ARCHOS 97 Titanium HD with the Onda V972 benchmarks figures globally gives a clear advantage to the Onda, but the difference is mainly noticeable in the Android user interface which is really smoother on the Onda, thanks to the 2 GB of RAM and the quad-core Allwinner A31 processor.

ONDA V972 9.7 inches IPS retina like display 2048x1536 pixels, Allwinner A31 quad-core CPU,2 GB RAM, Android 4.1, Dual camera

Ships out within 3 days

$ 220

ARCHOS 97 Titanium WIFI performance

This article won’t review the WiFI performance in details. Our first tests and feedback on our forum reported some troubles with the wireless: low sensibility, lots of connections drop and slow transfer speed. We initially made the video below to compare the 97 Titanium WiFI with the Nexus 10.

Since we shot this video, there has been some improvements with latest ARCHOS firmware, we’ll soon review it in a detailed ARCHOS 97 Titanium HD WiFI test.

ARCHOS 80 Titanium		AMAZON UK	Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days	£ 156.54
		AMAZON DE	Versandfertig in 3 – 4 Werktagen	184.79 EUR
		AMAZON FR	Expédition sous 1 à 2 jours ouvrés	188 EUR
		AMAZON IT	Generalmente spedito in 1-2 giorni lavorativi	191 EUR