

  (Source: iFixit)




Tegra3 v. A5X GLBenchmark
[Image Source: Laptop Magazine]


Tegra3 v. A5X GeekBench
[Image Source: Laptop Magazine]




Shadowgun wide
[Image Source: Laptop Magazine]



Source: Laptop Magazine

Comments     Threshold


Not a horrible GPU exaggeration after all
By tayb on 3/19/2012 12:45:20 PM , Rating: 3
That GL Bench is stunning. That is an outrageous difference in performance.

The CPU benchmark, likewise, is equally as stunning. The difference in clock speed can account for some of that difference (maybe 200 points?) but not nearly enough. It's ironic to me that Nvidia is mopping the floor in CPU performance but getting absolutely embarrassed in the GPU department.

At the end of the day though software makes the hardware irrelevant. iOS and WP7 just operate smoother than Android does. Android is a warm knife through butter, iOS/WP7 is a hot knife.

RE: Not a horrible GPU exaggeration after all
By mindless1 on 3/19/2012 1:49:55 PM , Rating: 2
Not necessarily ironic, iPad's huge battery and heat issues may come to show why the higher benchmark # isn't as important as power conservation.

It would be nice if we could "have it all", and on the cheap, but there will always be the battery tradeoff until we develop a battery with multiple times more energy density (and even then, companies will just think about downsizing the product with a smaller cheaper battery pack).

By tayb on 3/19/2012 3:52:47 PM , Rating: 2
The "new iPad" is about as heavy as the original and just slightly thicker than the 2. 10 hours of battery life is good enough for me. I haven't heard anything of heat issues (yet) but I haven't held one in my hands and probably won't until someone shows me one.

RE: Not a horrible GPU exaggeration after all
By Solandri on 3/19/2012 4:28:34 PM , Rating: 4
It's a fill test. Probably has more to do with graphics memory bus speed than the actual GPU. As with all benchmarks, it's important that all these components tests be considered as part of a whole, not piecemeal. The whole is what's important to the end-user.

The component benchmarks are more useful for helping the hardware designers decide which parts to improve in the next gen product. It's misleading and I would say irresponsible for marketing to use them to sell to end-users.

It'd be like Toyota advertising "The Prius uses no gas!*"

Strictly true, but incredibly deceptive the way it's presented.

* When stopped and idle for more than 10 seconds.

I think this is Android's Linux roots showing through. The Linux (and Unix) community has never really cared much for user interfaces. That's why CLIs (character line interfaces) are still very strong in that community. That's why they scoffed at the Mac and Windows when they first came out. Even X-windows is just a regular program.

iOS prioritizes user interface interactions and animations. That's what keeps it silky smooth. But the tradeoff is that if there's something CPU-intensive going on in the background, the UI can starve it (e.g. your music playback can skip). Android does not prioritize the UI, hence its multitasking is better, but the interface doesn't appear as smooth to the end-user.

I'm with Apple on this. In old days with single-core processors, equality of priority made sense. But now that dual cores are standard and quad cores are showing up, there's no reason not to prioritize the UI to keep it smooth and responsive. At a very minimum, the UI should be able to do as much as it likes whenever it likes on one core. Let the other apps and processes fight over the remaining core(s), as well as use unused cycles on the UI's core. But give the UI absolute priority over one core.




RE: Not a horrible GPU exaggeration after all
By sigmatau on 3/19/2012 9:49:06 PM , Rating: 2
So you like skipping music?

By testerguy on 3/20/2012 3:59:46 AM , Rating: 1
I'm sorry but a GL fill test is not comparable to Toyota saying 'the Prius uses no gas!'. It's a legitimate measure of the power and speed of a GPU when in use and needs no such disclaimers such as 'when the GPU is not being used'. It's not misleading any more than any of the CPU benchmarks are - which as the article states weren't all won by the Tegra.

I agree with you in general that how a device is put together overall is the most relevant metric but there are no easy benchmarks for that, taking FPS, for example, is not a proper benchmark because it doesn't take into account the resolution of that FPS. There's no benchmark to demonstrate that even with a slower CPU the iPad 'feels' faster when in use, either. To try and stay objective, review sites benchmark each individual component, and then offer their analysis on what the overall effect feels like.

By Dribble on 3/20/2012 5:45:24 AM , Rating: 2
In some ways you aren't comparing like to like.

iPAD 3 A5X die size is 163mm2
Tegra 3 die size is 80mm2

The A5X is a monster chip in comparison to the nvidia one. If you were able to just buy the A5X chip chances it would cost a lot more then the tegra 3.

