Anandtech: MediaTek cheats in benchmarks with ‘hidden sport mode’ – Tablets and phones – News

Processor designer MediaTek, according to tech site Anandtech, cheats in benchmarks with a ‘sports mode’ for benchmarks, which users cannot access themselves. The cheat is in devices from various manufacturers.

Anandtech discovered the cheat due to a dubious result from an Oppo Reno3 Pro, but the cheat can also be found in the firmware of many other manufacturers, including Sony, Vivo and Xiaomi. The / vendor / etc folder contained a power_whitelist_cfg.xml file containing benchmarks that had access to a “sports mode” that modified several elements to allow for higher benchmark results.

This included increasing the maximum temperature that the soc may reach, increasing the voltage and other adjustments. The cheat focused not only on consumer benchmarks, but also tools and versions that only media and manufacturers use. The difference is about 30 percent in the PCMark score, but can go as high as 75 percent in some tests.

MediaTek more or less confirms the findings in a response to Anandtech. The manufacturer says it follows ‘accepted industry standards’ in this area. “We believe that showing the full capabilities of a chipset in benchmarks is in line with other companies’ practices, and we believe that it will provide consumers with a good reflection of the performance of the device.”

MediaTek is the first processor designer to be caught cheating in benchmarks, but many manufacturers have been guilty of it. Tweakers already concluded a year and a half ago that cheating on benchmarks is such a widespread practice in the smartphone market that performance benchmarks no longer make sense, so reviews of Tweakers have lost those results since then.

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* on these benchmarks the cheat is present, but not active. Source: Anandtech

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