GPU Turbo 3.0 in EMUI 9 adds support for Fortnite, Minecraft, and 17 other games ~ XDA

Huawei’s GPU Turbo is a software feature which energizes gaming performance on a score of Huawei and Honor smartphones without exorbitantly snacking on the battery. Its benefits include a smoother gaming experience and improved battery performance while gaming. Since its launch in June last year with the Honor Play, GPU Turbo has been updated a couple of times for performance improvements and the inclusion of more titles. With the announcement of Huawei P30 series, the company has announced GPU Turbo 3.0 and extended support for 19 Android game titles.

The third generation of GPU Turbo comes as part of Huawei’s latest firmware version i.e. EMUI 9.1 which is based on Android 9 Pie and was announced with the Huawei P30 and P30 Pro. As per the company, GPU Turbo 3.0 cuts down on SoC power consumption by 10% and optimizes “the underlying system performance to provide a continuous gaming experience.” While the latest version of GPU Turbo is exclusively available on the Huawei P30 duo as of now, it will be rolling out to other Huawei and Honor devices with the EMUI 9.1 update.

Furthermore, the number of Android game titles which can utilize GPU Turbo has also been increased from 6 to 25. The games which have been newly added to the list include:

Fortnite
Knives Out
Battle Bay
Crazy Taxi
Real Racing 3
Into the Dead 2
NBA 2K19
Dragon Nest M
Duel Links
PES2019
DRAGON BALL LEGENDS
FIFA Mobile
Free Fire
Minecraft
Helix
Plants vs. Zombie Heroes
Subway Surfers
Brawl Stars
Speed Drifters

Besides faster touch response and lower energy consumption, GPU Turbo also reduces frame drops and results in a higher average frame rate compared to when the feature is switched off. Interestingly, it is not limited to flagships and Huawei has also pushed it to budget devices such as Honor 7X and Honor 9 Lite.

While Huawei and Honor have been showering us with numbers about improved performance with each new GPU Turbo update, AnandTech gives us a detailed insight into how the feature actually works. For GPU Turbo, Huawei trains neural networks about the relationship between SoC performance and the power consumed for different real and simulated gaming scenarios. During this training phase, the neural networks collect large sets of data to establish a correlation between the power input and output of CPU, GPU, and the RAM for all supported smartphones and titles individually. These data sets help the neural networks to identify different Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) states which ensure the highest performance and the lowest possible battery consumption at that performance.

The effect of GPU Turbo is better observed on Huawei and Honor smartphones that sport a neural processing unit (NPU) as it speeds up the “inferencing” i.e. execution of the models created by the neural networks. On devices that lack an NPU, the CPU does the job of constantly adjusting DVFS values to optimize power consumption without hampering the boost in gaming performance but the impact is relatively lower. Furthermore, GPU Turbo is also able to predict the requirements of the next frame, thereby having a more proactive approach compared to conventional DVFS drivers.

While the GPU Turbo technology is definitely exciting, Huawei had been adding new devices slowly. Meanwhile, the six titles which are already supported by GPU Turbo 2.0 include:

PUBG Mobile
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
Vainglory
Arena of Valor
Rules of Survival
NBA 2K18

We hope that Huawei rolls out GPU Turbo to more flagships and budget devices in the future. Meanwhile, to see the feature in action, you can watch our review in this video: