Reports that the Pixel 10’s Tensor G5 GPU are capped at 400MHz aren’t true, but the chip doesn’t run at full tilt either, and I have the data.
When switching to any new technology, there’s always a subset of techies curious about how things work—myself included. One of the biggest changes in the Pixel 10 series is the Tensor G5 processor’s new PowerVR GPU, built by Imagination Technologies.
Browsing through the graphics chip’s specs, a few things stand out. The core can support ray-tracing, but Google seems to have left this unimplemented. The peak GPU clock is reported at 1.1GHz; however, corners of the web suggest that the core is significantly downclocked to just 400MHz. Some have even suggested that driver issues could be to blame for its less-than-stellar benchmark results. Others point out that it could just be an app reporting issue. Naturally, I felt compelled to investigate.
To test, I grabbed my Pixel 10 Pro XL, made sure I was running the latest updates (I’m on build BD3A.250721.001.E1, if you’re curious), and ran system tracing to profile the SoC and see what the GPU was doing during a round of COD Mobile’s Battle Royale (with the 90Hz high refresh rate setting enabled).
In this just over four-minute snippet of the round, we can see a few interesting things. First, the GPU clock spent a lot of time at 396MHz — just like the reports suggest. I imagine this corresponds to areas with little rendering activity, such as running around in the open.
