AMERICANLEGACYMAG – Google’s Tensor chipset has long been the subject of criticism for its mediocre performance and thermal throttling issues. Most recently, early reports suggest the Tensor G4 on the Pixel 9 Pro XL may be particularly susceptible to the issue.
Tech enthusiast @callmeshazzam shared the alarming findings from a CPU throttling test on the Pixel 9 Pro XL in a post on his X account. The test results showed the Tensor G4 losing up to 50 percent of its processing power when given high-performance loads.
The stress test tracks the frequency of all eight CPU cores in the Tensor G4. After just three minutes of the phone pushing itself to its limits, throttling appears to start to set in. Performance continues to decline until the fourth minute when the CPU is estimated to have lost nearly 60 percent of its potential.
Raw performance numbers from the test show the Tensor G4 peaking at 341 GIPS (giga instructions per second) with an average of 246.6 GIPS. At its most aggressive throttling, the chip reportedly drops to just 145.5 GIPS or just 42.6 percent of its peak performance.
Its performance seems to recover somewhat afterward and stabilizes at around 65 percent of its maximum potential. Looking at the frequency graphs from the test, the Tensor G4 performance cores appear to have dropped as low as 1.32 GHz, while the efficiency cores hit a minimum of just 570 MHz.
Google is still tight-lipped about the official specifications of the Tensor G4, but Geekbench results suggest one core clocked at 3.1GHz, three cores clocked at 3.6GHz, and four efficiency cores clocked at 1.95GHz.
As quoted from Gizmochina , it’s important to note that instructions per second (GIPS) isn’t the most comprehensive performance metric and stress tests inherently push devices to their limits.
In real-world scenarios, the performance drop will likely be more subtle. However, this early report suggests Google may still need to optimize thermal management for the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 Pro XL.