News Nvidia questions Apple's A5X chip claims

[brumgrunt]

Nvidia has called on Apple to release the figures behind its claim of a four-fold boost in graphics performance for the A5X.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...ia-apple-a5x/1

[Madness_3d]

Yeah, as soon as I saw that claim I just thought what on earth are apple smoking. But of course apple fan boys will lap it up and brush off any question of inaccuracy in the figures. Really had enough of Apple playing this game now. Either up your game, or don't make up rubbish about performance that isn't there

[wuyanxu]

lol, 12 cores, does Asus know they are talking about pipelines, not cores?

here's a related article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5663/a...w-apple-ipad/1

[B1GBUD]

I had an Asus Eee-pad and thought it was clunky as hell, compared to a 1st Gen iPad.

I'd like to see how Apple came up with their figures though, not that it will stop me getting an iPad 3.

[Snips]

What's an iPad?

[kenco_uk]

One of these I think:

[Bauul]

Raw power counts for very little when faced with efficiently designed software. If Apple are taking into account all the overheads that Tegra 3 has to put up with when running an OS like Win 7, I wouldn't be surprised if they were talking truthfully.

It does surprise me that Apple are talking about benchmarks: they're offering has never been based on pure power, it's all about the delivery. As soon as they start talking numbers they're unpicking the overall experience that people really sign-up to Apple for.

[javaman]

Originally Posted by wuyanxu

lol, 12 cores, does Asus know they are talking about pipelines, not cores?

here's a related article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5663/a...w-apple-ipad/1

Yea thats the point theyre making. Apple twisted something that isn't remotely related which lead asus to twisted something that was so as to hit back. The underlying point is if your gonna twist something dont twist the wrong thing or you look like an even bigger numpty. It wasnt an attempt to be correct but to point out apple barely undertand archeticture so whats the chances of them getting it right? Maybe with graphics it does just work for Apple!

[hexx]

i was quite surprised that they've mentioned it at all. I just find all tech specs completely irrelevant on iPad, it either runs smoothly or it doesn't

[Guinevere]

Apple have shown time and time again on the iOS platform that BetterSpecification != BetterPerformance. So I very much doubt a Tegra device will out perform a new iPad in real world tests / apps / games.

Trouble is...

The new iPad has x2 the performance of an iPad 2 but x4 the pixels. Has that additional x2 performance figure been normalised for the extra resolution? Do we get x2 the performance when pumping x4 the pixels using x4 texture sizes? Or is it based on rendering the "old" 3D at the same 1024x768 res?

Basically can we bump up to retina resolution and get x2 the "stuff on screen" or x2 the FPS?

My gut feeling (based on knowing how Apple work as an iOS developer) I'd say if a game moves to retina resolutions and tries to use x4 the texture sizes then we'll see a similar (or lower FPS) to an iPad 2.

In reality I think we'll see games look a lot better without any slowdown as the devs will simply optimise things based on what works and looks best. They won't need to use x4 the textures for everything.

I'll let you all know next week.

[Guinevere]

Originally Posted by Bauul

It does surprise me that Apple are talking about benchmarks: they're offering has never been based on pure power, it's all about the delivery. As soon as they start talking numbers they're unpicking the overall experience that people really sign-up to Apple for.

I think they're defending the counter arguments before they arrive.

Q: Why is it thicker than the old one, what gives?
A: Because of that screen, we had to raise the pixels up.

Q: Isn't that crazy res going to slow things down?
A: No see, we're x4 better than the best of the rest.

It's all marketing. The iPad will be snappy and smooth and games will look great no matter what spec the damn thing has. They've added an additional 50% of battery capacity in there to cope with the extra demand from the new GPU and doubled up the RAM as well.

Asus, Nvidia KNOW they are back playing catch-up. They have great spec, they have great screens and the eco-system is getting better and better all the time but they are still have a bit further to go.

[trig]

im curious to see this ipad tbh...the first "real" release of an item that had virtually no production ready approval from jobs...

speaking of which, not sure why you guys are surprised they are talking about performance now...jobs is gone...he is the one that pushed the "who cares about power specs when we look this good" front...now the new guy wants to take on the world with a e-peen measuring stick...i say let him...chances are they will come up short, but still look better than anything else, which is why i own an epic touch, and apple stock...

[schmidtbag]

apple has a knack for pissing off the companies who help them. they sue companies like samsung for making a phone that just simply looks similar, yet samsung probably makes half the components inside any apple product. apple decided to drop adobe flash support almost completely, when macs (for some reason) are considered god-like machines for for media production - so apple basically just limited their users from a form of media. and now apple is throwing out this ridiculous claim toward nvidia? apple uses nvidia for graphics on their higher-end computers. nvidia can just change their mind and stop supporting apple if they really want. even apple using non-intel processors for ipad could be considered an insult to intel. if apple loses intel, their company as a whole is lost.

apple keeps acting like they're the boss of everyone. steve jobs had a big ego but when your company has one too, it makes the customers look bad.

[kenco_uk]

I'd rather hope that Apple's new chip does actually blow Tegra3 out of the water - it would certainly make not only NVidia but the whole industry sit up and take note. The cynical/perhaps logical part of me thinks it's just marketing and is based on some strange benchmark that's not really relevant.

[DbD]

The thing is that very little is graphics bound on a tablet. What do you do with it - surf the web, read emails, browse facebook - all cpu tasks not graphics. Some tasks do use graphics but if you can do it then you can do it such as watching movies - if it runs without dropping frames then a faster gpu doesn't help.

Hence it's really only for the odd game that graphics are really important, the rest of the time it's the cpu that matters.

In this measure tegra 3 thrashes apple because the new ipad is still only a dual core A9, where as tegra 3 is a quad core A9. Hence I'd expect it to be better at all the things above.

Sounds to me that apple is just trying to distract attention from that. I bet if they have the faster cpu in the iPad 4 then they'll not even mention graphics and instead tell the world the cpu is everything.

[alf-]

Originally Posted by schmidtbag

apple has a knack for pissing off the companies who help them. they sue companies like samsung for making a phone that just simply looks similar, yet samsung probably makes half the components inside any apple product. apple decided to drop adobe flash support almost completely, when macs (for some reason) are considered god-like machines for for media production - so apple basically just limited their users from a form of media. and now apple is throwing out this ridiculous claim toward nvidia? apple uses nvidia for graphics on their higher-end computers. nvidia can just change their mind and stop supporting apple if they really want. even apple using non-intel processors for ipad could be considered an insult to intel. if apple loses intel, their company as a whole is lost.

apple keeps acting like they're the boss of everyone. steve jobs had a big ego but when your company has one too, it makes the customers look bad.

Apple, Samsung and nividia are massive multi-billion dollar companies, they aren't kids, so the idea that nvidia or samsung will stop supplying apple with their products, because apple said some mean things is absurd.

these companies have a responsibility to their shareholders to make money, they aren't going to let minor squabbles get in the way of that.

[Malfrex]

This is all I have to say in response to Apple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMTU4qbbv20

Yes, the higher-res screen is great and I think it will help push forward high-res screens for other tablets/computers, but in the end its just a lot of flashy lights with an incremental improvement.

[brave758]

Originally Posted by Snips

What's an iPad?

Isn't it that thing women use once a month???

[brave758]

Originally Posted by kenco_uk

One of these I think:

+rep

[Tangster]

Originally Posted by schmidtbag

apple has a knack for pissing off the companies who help them. they sue companies like samsung for making a phone that just simply looks similar, yet samsung probably makes half the components inside any apple product. apple decided to drop adobe flash support almost completely, when macs (for some reason) are considered god-like machines for for media production - so apple basically just limited their users from a form of media. and now apple is throwing out this ridiculous claim toward nvidia? apple uses nvidia for graphics on their higher-end computers. nvidia can just change their mind and stop supporting apple if they really want. even apple using non-intel processors for ipad could be considered an insult to intel. if apple loses intel, their company as a whole is lost.

apple keeps acting like they're the boss of everyone. steve jobs had a big ego but when your company has one too, it makes the customers look bad.

Adobe did respond by taking a long, long time to get an x64 release of their software released on apple.