Why the New iPad 3 May Be Slower than iPad 2. Wait, What?

[Roger H. Veteran]

personally i think it will have the same performance and here is my reasoning.

if you look at the slides and the leaked microscope, you basically have 4 pixels on the iPad3 for every 1 on the 1/2. the A5X is a Quad core GPU with each GPU pushing the same number of pixels as previous iPads.

now thats a long shot, but i feel they Half-a**ed it just like they did with their " Multi-Tasking " ( i still dont belive it has multi tasking, its more akin to " Recently Used Programs "

No, you are thinking of it wrong, the current iPad2 is a dual core GPU so if you do 786,432/2 = 393,216 per core. The new iPad is 3,145,728/4 which is 786,432 pixels per core! So each core is doing double the work now compared to the first one. If the GPU had 8 cores then it would still be even.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

No, you are thinking of it wrong, the current iPad2 is a dual core GPU so if you do 786,432/2 = 393,216 per core. The new iPad is 3,145,728/4 which is 786,432 pixels per core! So each core is doing double the work now compared to the first one. If the GPU had 8 cores then it would still be even.

ok, i thought the iPad2 was single core GPU, Duel Core CPU. makes sense

[.Neo]

Why not wait those few extra days until the actual benchmarks come in?

We'll know on Friday. Apparently the GPU in the A5 was already overkill for a 1024x768 screen, so it might end up evening out.

I did read some discouraging reports about stuttering system animations etc. :/

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

Seems like an article for the sake of putting out an article. Why not wait those few extra days until the actual benchmarks come in?

because if the iPad turns out to be faster the writer just looks to be more of a hater. this way nobody can prove otherwise. im shure that if the performance of the iPad turns out to be like the article said, it will be trumpeted, and filled with " i told you so, if false it will be burried and ignored/forgotten

[Charisma Veteran]

Why not wait those few extra days until the actual benchmarks come in?

A major new product being released without wild speculation? Surely you jest :D

[TruckWEB]

Also the CPU went from 1GHz to 1.5GHz. That too should help with the better resolution.

Where did you get that information? I did not read about the clock speed of the A5X anywhere.... That and the final amount of RAM on the new iPad.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

All the resolution cheering stuff is pretty mute, especially for gaming. The iPad 3 will run games at a low resolution.

[UndergroundWire]

Where did you get that information? I did not read about the clock speed of the A5X anywhere.... That and the final amount of RAM on the new iPad.

You know you are right. My friend was at the conference and asked that question and they told her it was 1.5GHz. I thought it was public knowledge by now. I guess we will have to wait till Friday for that clock speed to be revealed by iFixIt.com or a similar type of site.

[TruckWEB]

All the resolution cheering stuff is pretty mute, especially for gaming. The iPad 3 will run games at a low resolution.

And you know that for a fact because? I remember Epic saying that the iPad was better than an X360 or PS3 for GPU/Memory ressource....

Not saying that games are going to use native resolution (some, simple one could), but why say "low resolution" ?

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

You know you are right. My friend was at the conference and asked that question and they told her it was 1.5GHz. I thought it was public knowledge by now. I guess we will have to wait till Friday for that clock speed to be revealed by iFixIt.com or a similar type of site.

was the memory actually increased ?

[UndergroundWire]

was the memory actually increased ?

That's what my friend told me (1GB). Again, I thought that info was released so we will have to wait until Friday when somebody tears it down.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

That's what my friend told me (1GB). Again, I thought that info was released so we will have to wait until Friday when somebody tears it down.

well so far wild guestimates are all thats been released, you say your friend was there, ill go with it, ill take 3rd hand knowledge over somebody wildly guessing

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

And you know that for a fact because? I remember Epic saying that the iPad was better than an X360 or PS3 for GPU/Memory ressource....

Not saying that games are going to use native resolution (some, simple one could), but why say "low resolution" ?

"Low resolution" in comparison to the touted 2048x1536. If you have a PC and game, you know the score with that kind of resolution.

[UndergroundWire]

well so far wild guestimates are all thats been released, you say your friend was there, ill go with it, ill take 3rd hand knowledge over somebody wildly guessing

The thing is the iPhone 4S has an A5 processor but it is under-clocked to 800MHz. I wouldn't be surprised if the A5X processor is 1.5GHz but it will be under-clocked to 1.2GHz for the new iPad. Since this device has the same battery life, one would wonder if they will be under-clocked. She was fairly confident that the RAM is 1GB.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

The thing is the iPhone 4S has an A5 processor but as under-clocked to 800MHz. I wouldn't be surprised if it was just bumped to 1.2GHz underclocked from 1.5GHz. Since this device has the same battery life, one would wonder if they will be under-clocked. She was fairly confident that it was 1GB RAM.

i can guess the underclocking was to preserve battery life

[UndergroundWire]

i can guess the underclocking was to preserve battery life

100%

[UndergroundWire]

This is interesting. 1GB RAM confirmed and 1GHz CPU speed. http://gizmodo.com/5892775/the-new-ipads-1gb-of-ram-and-1ghz-processor-confirmed

[migo]

Let me make a wild guess but "upscaling" should be done "by magic" via iOS no? They said it only take Devs couple hours to make their apps Retina aware...

It's dead easy if you just have 4 pixels doing the job of 1, that's more supersampling than upscaling. Getting an app to scale properly at any resolution is going to be trickier. Some games on Windows are letterboxed because they only render at 1280*720 even if the native res is 1280*800

[TruckWEB]

So same speed CPU/GPU, only 2 more GPU core to drive 4 time the amount of pixels. They should have at least increase the speed of the CPU/GPU to 1.2Ghz or something....

It's not going to be a problem for say, iPhoto, iBook or any 2D apps. But for games....

So yeah, bring on the upscaling, that's no desktop class gaming GPU pushing 2048x1536.

[Stetson]

Good point about 360 and PS3 games getting upscaled to 720, but that was fairly experienced game devs doing that. Do you think the type of devs that iOS attracts will know how to do that?

Any dev who builds a complex enough 3D game to push the limits of the GPU should be able to handle that.

Less complex games by devs with less experience shouldn't have to worry about pushing the GPU anyway.

[AJerman]

Yeah, this is exactly what I was saying. The A5X is barely anything new, hell, it's only a spec bump in the gpu, not even the CPU. All the more reason that the new iPad would be a pointless upgrade for a lot of people who already have an iPad.

[Astra.Xtreme]

Yeah, this is exactly what I was saying. The A5X is barely anything new, hell, it's only a spec bump in the gpu, not even the CPU. All the more reason that the new iPad would be a pointless upgrade for a lot of people who already have an iPad.

Actually I believe this processor is clocked quite a bit higher than the A5.

[AJerman]

Actually I believe this processor is clocked quite a bit higher than the A5.

We've already seen today that it's at 1 GHz, just like the A5.

[Astra.Xtreme]

We've already seen today that it's at 1 GHz, just like the A5.

Ah ok, you're right. Just saw the Engadget article a few minutes ago.

Thanks for correcting me.

[Detection]

Android market page for the OP mentioned benchmark

Comment from a few days ago "No support for multi core processors yet."

Way to benchmark Transformer Prime against iPad 2