The Motorola Moto G (3rd gen) has been in the hands of the folks over at Laptopmedia.com for a couple of days now, and they've had the time to run a few benchmarks on the upcoming sequel before its official launch tomorrow. The results will leave you with mixed feelings, though, as some of the numbers aren't what you'd call a drastic improvement.

The CPU scores of the new model indicate a significant boost in performance, brought about by the more powerful and higher-clocked 1.36GHz Cortex-A53 cores inside the Snapdragon 410, compared to the 1.2GHz Cortex-A7 quad-core CPU of the S400. The 40% increase in Geekbench 3 brings the Moto G (3rd gen) ahead of the current Moto E (2nd gen) where it belongs, but also leaves the S410 competition comfortably behind.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

Motorola Moto G (3rd gen) LM

1640

Motorola Moto E (2015)

1486

Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime

1469

Samsung Galaxy E7

1468

Samsung Galaxy A5

1460

Xiaomi Redmi 2

1460

Lenovo S90 Sisley

1377

Motorola Moto G (2nd gen) LM

1174

Qualcomm's own benchmarks paint largely the same picture, with substantial performance improvements of 31% in Vellamo 2 Metal and even more impressive 44% in Vellamo 3 Metal.

Antutu brings the other main components in the mix (memory, storage and GPU) and the excitement quiets down a little, though the improvements are still there.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

Motorola Moto G (3rd gen) LM

23258

Motorola Moto E (2015)

22761

Samsung Galaxy A5

21581

Samsung Galaxy E7

21562

Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime

21002

Xiaomi Redmi 2

20616

Lenovo S90 Sisley

19690

Motorola Moto G (2nd gen) LM

19335

Moving on to graphics benchmarks, you can see why the overall performance boost doesn't correspond to the increase in CPU power. The Adreno 306 inside the S410 in the third-gen Moto G is clocked a bit lower than the predecessor, resulting in marginally lower figures in the GPU tests. That said, the 2015 Moto G is on par with similarly equipped competitors, so no unpleasant surprises here, really.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

Motorola Moto G (2nd gen) LM

5.7

Lenovo S90 Sisley

5.4

Motorola Moto G (3rd gen) LM

5.3

Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime

5.3

Samsung Galaxy A5

5.3

Samsung Galaxy E7

5.3

Xiaomi Redmi 2

5.2

Motorola Moto E (2015)

5.2

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

Motorola Moto G (2nd gen) LM

1.8

Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime

1.8

Samsung Galaxy A5

1.8

Xiaomi Redmi 2

1.8

Samsung Galaxy E7

1.8

Lenovo S90 Sisley

1.8

Motorola Moto E (2015)

1.8

Motorola Moto G (3rd gen) LM

1.7

Mind you, the comparisons above are between the two generations of Moto Gs tested by Laptopmedia.com (hence the LM), while the other scores are taken from our database, but that should have negligible effect on the results. Also, given the supposedly unchanged $180 launch price of the new generation, the boost in CPU power while retaining the graphics performance, is a reasonable compromise.

Source 1 Source 2