wuzelwazel :
Source? I was hard pressed to find any Snapdragon 600 benchmarks, the only one I could was the LG Optimus G Pro in AnTuTu. All around Snapdragon 600 is definitely an improvement over Tegra 3. It scored well above in memory and graphics performance. However, it also scored much lower in CPU Integer performance and barely higher (2.5%) in Floating Point. That's compared to Tegra 3.
Not referencing the Snapdragon x00 series--I was thinking of the Krait S4 Pro (and similar) which have been out in devices for a long time already. The S4-based platform already beat ARM Cortex-A9 processors, which the 4i is based on. Also, AnTuTu is a dreadful cross-system benchmarking tool because it factors in so many other factors--like disk I/O performance, which has little to do with the CPU/GPU capabilities
wuzelwazel :
The biggest problem I have with your conclusion though is that the Tegra 4i doesn't have much in common with Tegra 3 aside from the NVIDIA logo.
I would argue the opposite; that the 4i has more in common with the T3. See below...
wuzelwazel :
Tegra 3 maxed out at 1.7GHz while Tegra 4i runs up to 2.3GHz, that's a 35% clock increase. It's unclear from the article whether the 15-30% "CPU speed increase" is clock for clock, but my guess is that it is. So tack another 15-30% increase onto the 35% increase and you're looking at a 55%-75% CPU theoretical performance increase when comparing Tegra 4i @ 2.3GHz to Tegra 3 @ 1.7GHz.
The 4i and the T3 are both ARM Cortex-A9. The only gains in processing power between the two are clock increases (the IPC are the same, so they have the same clock-for-clock performance). Biggest difference between T4i and T3 is, I would argue, the ability of all 4 cores in the 4i to run at max clock speed (vs. only one out of the 4 cores in the T3 capable of running at max clock, whilst the other three are slightly lower).
wuzelwazel :
Needless to say that's much better *potential* performance than the Snapdragon 600. Obviously there's more to an SOC than the CPU so we'll have to wait and see which outperforms, but I think it's a huge mistake to write off the Tegra 4i so quickly.
4i will be a mid-range platform. The biggest problem I have--and you're right, it's best to wait and see--is because of what ISN'T being said about it. Despite already being integrated into many devices, there have been zero 4i benchmarks released, whereas Nvidia couldn't wait to brag about how fast the Tegra4 (not 4i) was.
The summary is this: "Here is this awesome Tegra4 processor, and here is how it's better than T3, and this is how powerful it is. See? We put it in our SHIELD platform. Oh, and here's this other thing we're calling the Tegra4i that you're actually probably going to be getting in your phones; it has integrated LTE, it uses a different and older ARM architecture, but don't worry about its benchmarks, just trust us when we say it's awesome too..."