Preliminary Tegra 4 Benchmarks Leak; Lag Behind the iPad's A6X SoC

[dgstorm]

Supposedly, some preliminary benchmarks for the new NVIDIA Tegra 4 have leaked out, and while the performance seems excellent, it surprisingly lags behind the A6X chip that is in the current (4th) gen iPad. What the GL_Benchmark results pic above shows is the Dalmore, which is one of the two current Tegra 4 evaluation boards sent to developers. Of course, the curious devs decided to take the new hardware for a spin, and found the less than amazing results you see above. Here's a quote with some additional detail,

The GLBenchmark results you see here were achieved using Dalmore, which is one of the two Tegra 4 evaluation boards that select developers get to play with. Android 4.2.1 was installed on it, and the display used during testing had a resolution of 1920 by 1128 pixels, as reported by the app. The Tegra 4 chip ran at a maximum clock speed of over 1.8GHz.

As we mentioned above, the Tegra 4 scored well, but couldn't quite get to the score reached by the fourth-generation iPad and its A6X system-on-a-chip. For example, while the former got an average of 32.6 fps on Egypt HD Offscreen running at 1080p, the iPad 4 managed to run the same test at 49.6 fps on average.

It's probably important to note that this is just a reference board, and not a final optimized smartphone or tablet, so it is possible that some additional performance will be squeezed out with final shipping devices. Still, will performance tweaks and efficiency optimizations really make up for that much of a deficit? Feel free to check out more benchmark details at the source link below, then come back and share your thoughts.

Source: PhoneArena

 

[johnomaz]

So its a reference board, not the shipping product. Wait until you see an official device and see what happens. Also, in the benchmark, are extra visuals turned on since its a Tegra chip? If it has to render more because of those extra visuals...well...then the test is flawed. Also, is the iPad 4 even capable of running at 1080p? The resolution difference alone would be a big factor too. Run a PC benchmark at 1440x900 and then at 1920x1080 and look at the difference.

 

[jhhoffma]

So its a reference board, not the shipping product. Wait until you see an official device and see what happens. Also, in the benchmark, are extra visuals turned on since its a Tegra chip? If it has to render more because of those extra visuals...well...then the test is flawed. Also, is the iPad 4 even capable of running at 1080p? The resolution difference alone would be a big factor too. Run a PC benchmark at 1440x900 and then at 1920x1080 and look at the difference.

iPad (4th gen) has a resolution of 2,048×1,536 but I don't know that the test is being rendered at the displays native resolution. I think they're all equalized to 1920x1080 and the display scales it however it wants (usually displayed 1:1).

More of the same though...Apple's SoC are just more optimized for their platform (and visa-versa), and they do amazing stuff with it. One of the benefits of being vertically oriented. Another reason why Samsung is the only one who can compete with them.

It was the same with the Tegra3 and will be the same until Google starts dictating chip design to it's OEM partners. It's the same reason we get old-ish SoC's in the Nexus phones.

 

[WestOkid]

I agree with @jhhoffma. As much as we love the openness and diversity of Android, it has its drawbacks. People always talk about software fragmentation (various OS verisions), but hardware fragmentation is just as big. Without harmony between software and hardware performance will never be optimized. Android will always need twice the power of IOS to deliver the same results. The best way I can crystallize how important the software and hardware relationship is use everyday electronics. Blu ray players and $50 media players produce 24-30 frames per second of 1080p content without dropping a frame using some $10 crappy processor/GPU combo and no fan. For a PC to do the same, it needs to have a very good CPU and GPU with heat sinks and fans. It is not that the PC is less powerful, it's just a generic device not optimized for that task. This holds true for why a 10 year old xbox 360 can play the latest games and last year's PC cannot. Google really has to address this.

 

[combatmedic870]

Well...ios runs off of gpu power, not the cpu. Hence the need for 3 gpus. It doesn't multi task....so not much ram needed. Less ram and cpu power equals better on battery.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[PereDroid]

Benchmarks are MOSTLY over rated anyway, imo.
So "Where's My Water?" is going to open 1 millisecond faster on an iPad?
Yea, that's worth the extra $200....

 

[beerme]

Gaming looks good on Tegra 4 so far. Here's blood sword: sword of ruin THD gameplay on a reference tablet.

[video=youtube;XBJiJEo2rB8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBJiJEo2rB8[/video]