News Nvidia questions Apple's A5X chip claims

What we know:
On the CPU side of things, the A5x has two Arm Cortex A9 cores, and the Tegra 3 has 4 Arm Cortex A9 cores. Both can be clocked up and down depending on the thermal sinking available, so there's no real way to compare clock speeds.
On the GPU side, the A5 (non x, in the ipad2 and iphone 4S) contains a PowerVR SGX543MP2. This is a more grunty chip than the Kal-El Geforce used in the Tegra 3. Even if the A5x makes no changes to the GPU, it will still crunch more numbers than the Tegra 3.

What makes things fuzzier is the resolution jump: previously, the Tegra 3 had to push 1024000 pixels to the A5 786432 (i.e. 30% more). The A5x has to handle 4x the pixels than the A5 (3145728), but to make things fair the Tegra 3 that will almost certainly be in the Transformer Infinity will also be handling just over double the pixels it was (2304000), meaning the tables have turned and the pixel-pushing workload for the A5x will be 30% more than the Tegra 3. Now, graphics performance may not scale directly with the number of pixels rendered (vertex shader limited? Who knows, I'm not that deep into the nitty-gritty of GPU pipelines), but the A5x will by default contain a more powerful GPU than the Tegra 3. It may even be more powerful at the same resolution, but when the increase in screen real-estate is taken into account, the actual performance difference in comparative FPS may not be so great, certainly not 4x.

Remember also, the the GPU has little to do with non-gaming tasks as long as it's set up to handle high resolutions. Even current chips should be able to handle anything 2D at 2048x1536 (or 1920x1200) without breaking a sweat. Unless you intend to play a lot of graphically intensive games, the GPU powering your fondleslab of choice is a non-issue.

 

You followed a "May even be more powerful" with a "May not be so great" and finished off with a "Certainly not 4x".

Now it's you who's making assumptions. Not that I say you're wrong, but I don't have my new iPad yet (But it has been shipped) and neither does anyone else who's arguing about this. And even when I do get it I won't be running benchmarks on the friggin' thing!

You don't know anything about Apple's benchmark conditions or how efficient the GPU is at the res Apple test at and the clock speed they can get away with. I don't know either, which is why I wouldn't say "Certainly" about anything.

The most knowledgeable people who do know are Apple and they'll only give us the "best case" figures and never ever EVER the worst case.

They say it's x4 faster? At what? Drawing single pixels? Scrolling web pages? Blank texture fills? Shaders? Some magic secret combination of all or some of them?

It won't average out to x4 will it! If the "average" improvement was x4 and some tasks were only x1.5 and others were x8, they'd use that x8. The x4 will be under a narrow range of conditions... but maybe that's the narrow range of conditions they'll want everyone to use?

I "certainly" don't have the answer

 

For real? What are you doing tonight, big boy?

 

The problem with the "new" iPad is would you really buy a new one if you already owned an iPad or iPad2?

Personally, I'll sit on my hands until Win8 delivers the iPads true challenger.

 

I've never had a problem with Apple. I own a nice Macbook Pro (2008) and had a Mac Mini until recently. The iPhone's home button went up the wall so took that to CPW and bought a Windows Phone.

Ironically, on the 20th February, I lost my mac.com email address for over two weeks and over five engineers could not explain what happened or how I got it back. The customer relations has always been good with any issue I've had apart from this particular one and, do you know what? They gave me a nice discount on the new iPad 3 as compensation.

If the Windows tablet was here, I may have chosen that instead but, like everything, App support is what drives the tablet sales and if the Microsoft Marketplace charging plus 5x the price for the same iOS game is anything to go by just because it has XBox Live support, you can colour me not impressed. And the devices aren't released yet.

I'm not a fanboy - I appreciate the fact that there are some things available on iOS devices that are awesome (Yamaha's Tenori-On as an example). I also know that I wouldn't play WoW or Skyrim on anything other than a Windows machine. iMacs are just a nice extravagance in my book and the more powerful the Pad, the more onus is to use that than turn on the Macbook.

And in answer to the post above, if I had an iPad, I would be seriously considering an upgrade. If I had an iPad 2, however, I would be waiting for the next iteration of Pad or Wintablet.

 

No, but then again, I would already own an iPad.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I really hope the Win8 tablet can deliver the goods. Smoothness looks good so far; now the battery life.

 

i allready traded the awful ipad for a asus transformer and i have to tell you who cares about a product that will be extremely over rated and over priced ,the apple software is an abomination i still can't understand why would anyone buy it its totally locked up .. i understood the appeal of apple a few years back when they had their ow cpu and suff but nowadays its just a company that lives from marketing ... i got to tell you the transformer is considerably faster that an ipad 1 trust me i was almost ready to throw it against a wall its just awful

 

1. Apple has never had their "own" CPU. First it used the Motorola, then Intel and for its mobile devices a customised ARM. Ironically the latter is more Apple's own design than anything else it has used in the past.

2. Android is becoming a closed garden as much as Apple's iOS, especially after some embarrasing malware incidents. You cannot root the Asus Transformer without losing warranty and tech support, by the way. Bit like Apple and jailbreaking.

3. As for overpriced: nobody has been able to release a comparable product for a cheaper price.

 

Except for
A) Samsung 10.1 tab being £100 cheaper than an ipad 2 with the same functionality and better cache managment, not to mention a more powerful cpu/gpu combination.
B) Samsung Galaxy Nexus being a FAR cheaper phone to buy outright or on contract than the 4S.

I could go on but you saying apple aren't overpriced is frankly laughable.

 

Really? Would you like to give me some links?

 

"better cache management"

oh boy!!
take my money now Samsung!!!
cause better cache management is something i really look for in a tablet!


seriously though, do you actually think your average consumer knows what cache management even means, let alone care about it?

as for the rest of your post,

A) the Samsung tab launched at the SAME price as the ipad 2, its only down in price now because it couldn't compete at the same price point

B) seriously, look at some benchmarks

 

The eeePad prime is wafer thin.

 

I know. I've seen one. You kind of look at it edge on, then look at the screen, then look at it edge on, then look at the screen... And all the while you think: how did they do that?!? It's thin. Like, anorexic.

 

yet you still don't own one and from your comment I don't believe you've used one. we get it, it's not for you. if I don't need to to work on photographs (LR) iPad would be all I need.

"mumble something about not syncing properly" - iCloud - ever heard of it? or syncing with what???

 

Yeah, Apple is failing so badly that it's richer than Switzerland.

Must be all those sheep who unquestioningly don't follow the true religion follow the latest fashion in gadgetry. Couldn't be that the device actually meets most people's needs/wants spot on. That's crazy talk. Most people would much rather have a clunky PC with an OS that needs defragmenting, updating, anti-virus and malware scanning, trouble shooting, restoring and reinstalling every so often. A device that just does basic tasks transparently and reliably? Nope, not seeing the appeal.

 

@ Nexxo - there's no point, haters will always blindly hate and will always have their baseless statements.

 

Who cares, really.

Chances are it is faster, at specific things.

The Apple dedicated, and ill educated, will take it as fact that it's faster in "every situation", and then the opposition to Apple will argue with them until they both die out, and the rest of us will just carry on not caring.

 

I wonder how many Chinamen are going to kill themselves making this one version.

 

Probably less per capita than any large city in the west. The actual figures are very low (and even were when the news started coming out) as a % of population at the factory Shenzhen its lower than most western societys.

Just sayin'.

 

LOL!!!!!!!! good one