Your Google Pixel should see a bump in gaming performance with the December Feature Drop update

The December Feature Drop update (Android 14 QPR1) arrived a few hours ago with several improvements, bug fixes and new features, and it seems that it also brought a surprise in the form of better gaming performance for Google Pixel devices.

Following the latest Pixel Feature Drop rollout, Android expert Mishaal Rahman posted on X that the update also brought a ‘much newer ARM Mali GPU kernel driver to Tensor Pixels’. In case you don’t know, all Google Tensor chipsets use Mali GPUs instead of designing their own, although this is not that strange since only a few like Qualcomm and Apple have their own mobile GPUs (even Exynos chips use Mali GPUs).

Updating GPU drivers is a well-known practice in the PC and laptop segments. New versions usually offer performance optimizations and other improvements, and it seems that that is just what has happened with the Google Tensor Mali GPUs.

Apparently, popular games like Genshin Impact and Fortnite now run noticeably better on Google Pixel devices after the December Feature Drop. According to the report, the GPU kernel driver was updated to r44p1 (available from October 2023), a big jump compared to the previous r38p1 released in August 2022. So, there is a theoretical leap of more than a year in hardware optimizations.

In our personal testing with Genshing Impact, we managed to get a constant 60 FPS at the recommended settings (low-medium graphics) using a Google Pixel 7a. On the other hand, Alex Mullis from Android Authority experienced in Fortnite an impressive increase from about 20-25 FPS to 45+ FPS (with Game Dashboard enabled) on the Fontaine City map.

Results in CPU benchmarks (such as Geekbench) also seem to have improved noticeably. The X/Twitter user untyltedcorp shared screenshots comparing the results obtained on a Google Pixel 8 before and after the update, with multi-core power being especially improved.

The same user made a similar comparison (before updating vs. after updating), but in the Antutu benchmark tests, and the results speak for themselves:

Additionally, another X user called TechDroider published a video comparison showing that the Pixel 8 with the latest Mali GPU drivers (running Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1.1) boasts a constant 60 FPS when playing Fortnite with maximum graphic settings.

So, everything indicates that the latest December Feature Drop brought a surprising but welcome big improvement to gaming performance too, which is excellent news for all Google Pixel device users.

To top it off, the only Google phone compatible with Android 14 that probably won’t receive this improvement is the Pixel 5a 5G, since it uses Qualcomm hardware and there is no news of new drivers for its GPU.