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Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 03:49 am
Reported fourth-gen iPad benchmarks show faster processor, quad-core GPU
A post from Primate Labs, developer of online benchmarking website Geekbench, reveals what are believed to be the first scores of Apple's newest 9.7-inch iPad, showing that the performance of the tablet's A6X processor more than doubles the composite score of the third generation iPad.
Reported fourth-generation iPad benchmarks. | Source: Geekbench
According to Primate Labs' John Poole (via MacRumors), a device with the identifier "iPad3,4" logged a benchmark test on Sunday, with the device boasting an A6X chip clocked at 1.39GHz paired with 1GB of memory. This is similar to the die architecture found in the iPhone 5's A6 SoC, but that processor runs at a lower 1.3GHz to conserve energy.
Besides the higher clock speed, the A6X appears to be leveraging quad-core graphics, compared to the triple-core configuration seen in the iPhone 5, to power the high-resolution Retina display.
Overall, the fourth-generation iPad achieved a Geekbench score of 1757, outperforming the iPhone 5 by ten percent and more than doubling the scores seen with the third-generation iPad and iPad 2.
Apple unveiled the refreshed 9.7-inch tablet at a special event last week that also saw the debut of the 7.9-inch smaller iPad mini.
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Previous Comments View All
"...showing that the performance of the tablet's A6X processor more than doubles the composite score of the third generation iPad." Just as Tim Cook predicted.
Seriously: still caring about power statistics?
I thought these days were long over.
At least for anything not being a PC. Sorry, but I fail to see the consumer benefit of these statistics. As long as it does what it needs to do and offers new possibilities for developers, who cares about how much more power it has?
@pinolo - as you say, it all depends on doing what it needs to do.
You have to remember that these days there are a lot of people who buy an iPad to play games on. It has become a serious mobile gaming platform. As soon as the new possibilities are realised by the developers, users of the older iPads will start to find more and more of the new titles to be either unavailable or perform poorly on their hardware.
When this happens only 6 months after release, this is a great way to anger a proportion of the current customer base. To add to these woes, Apple's refurb store is now throwing out the iPad I bought 6 months ago at a substantial discount, causing it's second-hand value to be heavily eroded. Bang goes the low(ish) cost upgrade path.
Just another perspective - Yes, it's a bit "PC", no, I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but there is a proportion of the user base that are slightly rubbed the wrong way by this behaviour.
I know tech moves on, but this is silly. My 3 year old iMac i5 is coming up for an upgrade with the new ones this year, but at the same price point, the new i5 isn't going to have double the performance of my current one, and that's after 3 years of progress, not 6 months.
Short changed? Yeah... a bit... Live with it? I guess so.
there is a LOT of development around ARM.
x86/ia64 intel is stagnating . Intel is only one company, but ARM processors are made and designed by more than 20s companies. it's that huge. of course, we will see fast progress here, no more on x86/ia64 intel.
@pinolo - as you say, it all depends on doing what it needs to do.
You have to remember that these days there are a lot of people who buy an iPad to play games on. It has become a serious mobile gaming platform. As soon as the new possibilities are realised by the developers, users of the older iPads will start to find more and more of the new titles to be either unavailable or perform poorly on their hardware.
When this happens only 6 months after release, this is a great way to anger a proportion of the current customer base. To add to these woes, Apple's refurb store is now throwing out the iPad I bought 6 months ago at a substantial discount, causing it's second-hand value to be heavily eroded. Bang goes the low(ish) cost upgrade path.
Just another perspective - Yes, it's a bit "PC", no, I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but there is a proportion of the user base that are slightly rubbed the wrong way by this behaviour.
I know tech moves on, but this is silly. My 3 year old iMac i5 is coming up for an upgrade with the new ones this year, but at the same price point, the new i5 isn't going to have double the performance of my current one, and that's after 3 years of progress, not 6 months.
Short changed? Yeah... a bit... Live with it? I guess so.
The point is, would you buy the discounted old iPad3 when a new more than twice as fast iPad4 is available? I wouldn't. And in that case your not short changed. You only have slower hardware.
And slow only in comparison, because in absolute sense the iPad3 is a 'beast' and you will be able to play the new games because game engines are scalable and only some games push the iPad to the max.
The reason performance doubled in such a short time is that the feature size of the current chips is 32nm instead of 45nm. The iPad3 has the old technology, simply because chips with the new feature size were not ready at the time.
Why did Apple release the iPad3? I don't know that for sure ofcourse, but it seems likely that a retina display iPad was a must for Apple because it would be to late if they waited a half year. It's seems that's pretty accurate because several other tables have retina displays now.
I bought the iPad3 because of it's retina display, and that's still the best choice possible.
It's an incredible display.
J.
All well and good, but how does it stack up against those quad-core Tegras? It's claimed that Apple's hardware is weak when compared to the mighty Android quad-core tablets and that Apple is falling far behind the general processor curve.
Apple apparently is taking a parallel track to that of Android devices. Regular customers may not care about this but it matters a lot within the development fold. The part about "as long as it does what it needs to" and "offers new possibilities to developers" stem directly from such statistics. 
All well and good, but how does it stack up against those quad-core Tegras? It's claimed that Apple's hardware is weak when compared to the mighty Android quad-core tablets and that Apple is falling far behind the general processor curve.
I see just the opposite with claims that Apple's total package trounces anything offered by competitors.
Seriously: still caring about power statistics?
I thought these days were long over.
At least for anything not being a PC. Sorry, but I fail to see the consumer benefit of these statistics. As long as it does what it needs to do and offers new possibilities for developers, who cares about how much more power it has?
The consumer benefit is not having to deal with the general lagginess of Android tablets.
Furthermore, as iOS develops, there are more and more games and other apps that require high performance.
All well and good, but how does it stack up against those quad-core Tegras? It's claimed that Apple's hardware is weak when compared to the mighty Android quad-core tablets and that Apple is falling far behind the general processor curve.
Who claims that? Please cite a reputable source that says that Apple's product performance falls significantly behind any Android product.
Not just arbitrary specs (i.e., number of cores), but actual performance. Apple generally wins.
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Here I was loving the speed and fluidity of my 5 and I discover my pre-ordered iPad 4 will put it to shame?
God bless Apple's marketing department for making these devices seem so quick to us all!