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Early iPhone 6 Benchmarks Show Small GPU Performance Improvement

Tags:
  • Smartphones
  • Apple
  • Mobile
  • iPhone
  • Graphics
  • GPUs
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Anonymous
September 12, 2014 12:03:43 PM

New iPhone 6 benchmarks point to a GPU that's weaker than Apple may have led us believe at the iPhone announcement.

Early iPhone 6 Benchmarks Show Small GPU Performance Improvement : Read more

More about : early iphone benchmarks show small gpu performance improvement

September 12, 2014 12:35:33 PM

Even if you double the raw GPU power, that does you little good unless you have nearly double the memory bandwidth to support it.

The A8 might have 50% extra raw GPU power but require architecture-specific software tweaking to reduce its memory bandwidth dependence before the extra processing power can be leveraged.
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September 12, 2014 12:39:28 PM

It could be that they are talking about total GPU power and not relative power. The 37% increase in screen resolution and still pushing 16% faster equates to about 50% to me.
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September 12, 2014 12:58:31 PM

More pixels.
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September 12, 2014 1:08:35 PM

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

oh I forgot....

HA!
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September 12, 2014 1:18:07 PM

Typical of Apple. Make their phones such that their specs look good on paper but in the real world, no one notices the differences. Fanbois will always be delusional enough to think that they notice a difference, but in reality, there probably isn't one.
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September 12, 2014 1:37:19 PM

But still dual core.
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September 12, 2014 1:54:32 PM

Yup, STILL dual core.
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September 12, 2014 2:00:25 PM

If they weren't all talk during the keynote, then the biggest advance would be efficiency. Will have to wait and see if talks of less heating during gameplay holds true.
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September 12, 2014 2:22:49 PM

I am no apple fan but even if their cpu's are still relatively low clock speed dual cores they do perform pretty well. I sometimes get the feeling that the high clock speed quad cores are the FX of the mobile world. Lots of cores, lots of clock speed yet not the performance you'd want.
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September 12, 2014 2:24:41 PM

Leaks suggest the iPhone 6 is also still crippled by a pathetic 1GB of RAM (good luck multitasking with that). The fact that Apple hasn't mentioned memory in the press releases strongly imply this is indeed the case.
http://bgr.com/2014/08/18/iphone-6-rumors-ram-memory/
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September 12, 2014 2:35:22 PM

Apple? Not telling the whole truth? Oh hush with that nonsense that would never happen!
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September 12, 2014 2:52:30 PM

Quote:
Leaks suggest the iPhone 6 is also still crippled by a pathetic 1GB of RAM (good luck multitasking with that). The fact that Apple hasn't mentioned memory in the press releases strongly imply this is indeed the case.
http://bgr.com/2014/08/18/iphone-6-rumors-ram-memory/


Read this aloud, "1GB of RAM is easily capable of running the desktop version of Windows 7/8."

Now remember, not everything is Android and insanely memory hungry. WP is the leader when it comes to performing well with lower amounts of memory, but iOS is not bad and if Apple is doing their job and optimizing, iOS8 should run well on 1GB of RAM.

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September 12, 2014 3:29:43 PM

qlum said:
I am no apple fan but even if their cpu's are still relatively low clock speed dual cores they do perform pretty well.

Having lots of cores does you no good when most software makes little to no meaningful use of threading.

In the Android Development Kit guidelines, they tell developers to use threaded objects to do things like load images to avoid bogging down the main thread so applications can feel more responsive. This is fine as far as responsiveness is concerned but in terms of CPU performance scaling, those extra threads will be waiting on IO most of the time so overall performance remains mostly the same and perceived performance is dominated by single-threaded performance: how quickly the main thread can manage the UI's layout and parsing.

So I have no trouble believing a lower-clocked CPU with fewer cores but higher IPC can end up generally more responsive than CPUs with more cores and higher clocks.
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September 12, 2014 3:35:19 PM

If the boost is coming from the API, won't the 5s see a boost as well once it is updated to iOS8? They must have just boosted the frequencies and factored in the API improvements. They might have to amend to say, "50% increase of 5s running iOS7"
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September 12, 2014 4:23:23 PM

How about that I tell you that its a same slightly redesigned GPU to be more power efficient or faster & it happened after Nv marked to Imagination how their GPUs are power not power efficient. IPs did happen almost at the start of the year bat this will be the first commercially available part.

Where did Apple got those performance projections?
How about a little quote: "Series6XT GPU cores are up to 50% faster clock for clock, cluster for cluster compared to their Series6 counterparts".
Who wants to read more about it can officially @:
http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/new-powervr-series6xt-gp...
Why didn't they go with more clusters?
Well ask the rotten Apple not me.
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September 12, 2014 4:27:13 PM

Lol I hate auto correct!
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September 12, 2014 4:40:40 PM

Hmm...wish I could buy Oneplus One!
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September 12, 2014 5:55:41 PM

So still half the speed and twice the price of it's competitors ?? OK just checking, yup still crapple.
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September 12, 2014 7:57:46 PM

Quote:
Quote:
Leaks suggest the iPhone 6 is also still crippled by a pathetic 1GB of RAM (good luck multitasking with that). The fact that Apple hasn't mentioned memory in the press releases strongly imply this is indeed the case.
http://bgr.com/2014/08/18/iphone-6-rumors-ram-memory/


Read this aloud, "1GB of RAM is easily capable of running the desktop version of Windows 7/8."

Now remember, not everything is Android and insanely memory hungry. WP is the leader when it comes to performing well with lower amounts of memory, but iOS is not bad and if Apple is doing their job and optimizing, iOS8 should run well on 1GB of RAM.



7/8 can run on 1GB but it certainly should not. It is not smooth nor is it fun. I have tried. Even 2GB of RAM is cutting it close.

My main problem is that everyone was touting the 64Bit Apple CPU yet it is pointless with 1GB of system RAM. The biggest benefits of 64Bit is that the OS can allocate more than 4GB and the apps can access more than 2GB (without the need of PAE of course which even still limits it to 4GB).

Overall it shows that Apple is still behind the curve. The S6 is going to be a 64Bit CPU, probably 3GB+ system RAM, rumors of a 4K display but most likely a 5.5 inch QHD screen and even the possibility of it having the same wrap around screen as the Galaxy Edge.

This just shows that it is the same fluff Apple always does. They finally catch up and tout it as revolutionary when in fact it is not. NFC is not new. Hell my phone has NFC (S4) and I can even share movies between Galaxy phones. And it is almost 2 years old.

Still though people flock like sheep to the iPhone as if it is Gods gift to man.

On another note, I have been playing with WP8.1 and I like it so far. Smooth and fast. As well it has made me realize that the iPhone is babies first phone.
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September 12, 2014 11:13:21 PM

Ha ha ha! This result and still EA claims that iPhone 6 is better than PS4 and Xbox One! So delusional. Is it a coincidence that they are similar? oh, wait! EA.... Eventually Apple.... hmmm no wonder then.
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September 12, 2014 11:27:40 PM

If this ins't Tom's tests - why put them in a Tom's graph?
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September 13, 2014 2:23:19 AM

I'm so sorry I bought an M8 just few days ago, 128gb sd, bluetooth keyboard and UAG maverick cover, for less than the cheapest iFisher-Price phone 6 :D 
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September 13, 2014 2:34:42 AM

InvalidError said:
qlum said:
I am no apple fan but even if their cpu's are still relatively low clock speed dual cores they do perform pretty well.

Having lots of cores does you no good when most software makes little to no meaningful use of threading.

In the Android Development Kit guidelines, they tell developers to use threaded objects to do things like load images to avoid bogging down the main thread so applications can feel more responsive. This is fine as far as responsiveness is concerned but in terms of CPU performance scaling, those extra threads will be waiting on IO most of the time so overall performance remains mostly the same and perceived performance is dominated by single-threaded performance: how quickly the main thread can manage the UI's layout and parsing.

So I have no trouble believing a lower-clocked CPU with fewer cores but higher IPC can end up generally more responsive than CPUs with more cores and higher clocks.


This is getting a bit technical, but a lot of what you are discussing is very Android specific. (And I'm not disagreeing with you.) It helps when the OS and platform/model is assisting with the threading, where Android offers almost nothing.

One tiny example specific to your post would be WP/Windows - grabbing an image using the OS APIs not only automatically creates the thread for the developer, it also uses whatever hardware is available, even using the GPU for decoding if it would be faster and is available. (This is why Win7/8 on the desktop would be able to load media and images so much faster than XP, as it was using the WDM/WDDM driver and shoving the decode through the GPU and threading the loadimage APIs.)

The development on WP and Android is night and day, and where most of the performance difference of WP comes from when people talk about Apps and the UI being more responsive and faster, as the OS is managing these things for developers and using more of the hardware than Android uses.

Side Note - This is why Microsoft required dual core devices for WP8, as the App platform it uses is highly threaded - even if the developers don't use/consider/understand threading, as it automatically gives developers a lot of background concurrency that Android and even iOS don't have.


The main CPU bump Apple had with the 5s was due to the ARMv8 differences that incorporates more CISC functionality into the ARM RISC model. (Being 64bit had little difference, especially with virtually no OS level support for 64bits.)

The GPU differences they are touting for the iPhone 6 are more than just iOS optimizations, but they are not huge.

I even if you take the percentages that Apple gives out at face value, they are a 50% gain, which is easily consumed in pushing the extra pixels on the screen.

The iPhone GPU isn't some major new revolution.

If you look at the numbers it barely beats the Adreno 330 GPU with the 801 Qualcomm. Even the Nokia 1520/Icon with the older Qualcomm 800 is in the same performance range as the new iPhone 6. So the iPhone 6's new GPU is just keeping up with a Win8 phone that was released in November of 2013.

(The Nokia 1520 and Icon both held the 3D/gaming title until the new HTC came out, and that is still questionable, as the HTC was found to be using tricks when it detected benchmarking software.)


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September 13, 2014 7:04:21 AM

Quote:
Read this aloud, "1GB of RAM is easily capable of running the desktop version of Windows 7/8."


Though, if you are running your PC with 1GB these days, you're seriously doing everything you can to avoid multitasking. It's possible, if it's used for things like a media player. But don't come and try saying 1GB is enough for more than just simple single-tasking.
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September 13, 2014 10:01:40 AM

Tegra K1 shows nearly 29k @1200p vs 15k @ 750p for the A8.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8296/the-nvidia-shield-ta...

That's around 4.5x the performance when normalized for resolution (pixels x score). Sure, the K1 draws more power at that level, but drop it to match the performance of the A8, and it probably remains close to 1.4x more power efficient as shown with the A7. It will be even more interesting when the maxwell based Tegra shows up next year with ~2x the perf/W.

Maybe it's time Apple change its GPU provider?

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September 13, 2014 12:50:19 PM

Quote:
The iPhone 6 results are taken from the Basemark X's site, which come from an unknown submitter that has tested the device. The iPhone 6 hasn't been tested yet by Tom's Hardware so we can't confirm the veracity of these results


And yet an unsubstantiated rumor on untested unoptimized software and unreleased hardware doesn't prevent Tom's from basing an entire article on it.
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September 13, 2014 4:37:55 PM

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Leaks suggest the iPhone 6 is also still crippled by a pathetic 1GB of RAM (good luck multitasking with that). The fact that Apple hasn't mentioned memory in the press releases strongly imply this is indeed the case.
http://bgr.com/2014/08/18/iphone-6-rumors-ram-memory/


Read this aloud, "1GB of RAM is easily capable of running the desktop version of Windows 7/8."

Now remember, not everything is Android and insanely memory hungry. WP is the leader when it comes to performing well with lower amounts of memory, but iOS is not bad and if Apple is doing their job and optimizing, iOS8 should run well on 1GB of RAM.



7/8 can run on 1GB but it certainly should not. It is not smooth nor is it fun. I have tried. Even 2GB of RAM is cutting it close.

My main problem is that everyone was touting the 64Bit Apple CPU yet it is pointless with 1GB of system RAM. The biggest benefits of 64Bit is that the OS can allocate more than 4GB and the apps can access more than 2GB (without the need of PAE of course which even still limits it to 4GB).

Overall it shows that Apple is still behind the curve. The S6 is going to be a 64Bit CPU, probably 3GB+ system RAM, rumors of a 4K display but most likely a 5.5 inch QHD screen and even the possibility of it having the same wrap around screen as the Galaxy Edge.

This just shows that it is the same fluff Apple always does. They finally catch up and tout it as revolutionary when in fact it is not. NFC is not new. Hell my phone has NFC (S4) and I can even share movies between Galaxy phones. And it is almost 2 years old.

Still though people flock like sheep to the iPhone as if it is Gods gift to man.

On another note, I have been playing with WP8.1 and I like it so far. Smooth and fast. As well it has made me realize that the iPhone is babies first phone.


Lets try this, Try educating your self for just a mere moment and then tell me 64Bit is pointless.
http://www.imore.com/vector-48-64-bit-metal-and-state-c...

Then please explain me to how the results of this test are possible.
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/66665...

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September 14, 2014 8:25:27 AM

I recall that some recent console game demos (xb1 and ps4) at trade shows didn't use the console hardware at all but used a PC "offstage" using an i7 with a GeForce 780Ti. There is no guarantee that this demo actually used A8 hardware or metal for that matter. The device was offstage, and the display was probably better than 750p.

It does look good - very Trine-like actually. But I'd wait for the shipping product before declaring victory for Super Evil MegaCorp and the game company they funded.




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September 14, 2014 8:46:35 AM

Quote:
More pixels.


yes, no mention of screen resolution on those benchmarks. is this really still tom's hardware?
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September 14, 2014 12:29:43 PM

Benchmark excludes Nokia 1520 and Icon which are better.
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September 14, 2014 1:22:13 PM

deppman said:
I recall that some recent console game demos (xb1 and ps4) at trade shows didn't use the console hardware at all but used a PC "offstage" using an i7 with a GeForce 780Ti. There is no guarantee that this demo actually used A8 hardware or metal for that matter. The device was offstage, and the display was probably better than 750p.

It does look good - very Trine-like actually. But I'd wait for the shipping product before declaring victory for Super Evil MegaCorp and the game company they funded.


If yours is an answer to my question, thank you.
If the screen was higher than the 750p of the iPhone 6 (maybe that was FullHD iPhone 6Plus?) then I would see there only a greater power output from the hardware and the features of Metal.
I would not be so wary of Apple because it would seem like an own goal to show that video on one occasion as "solemn" and advertised. If the game really will not be distributed, or does not run with the same fluidity, you would find in the web spot much worse than Samsung ...

(I apologize for the English Google)
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September 14, 2014 3:23:15 PM

Quote:
Quote:
The iPhone 6 results are taken from the Basemark X's site, which come from an unknown submitter that has tested the device. The iPhone 6 hasn't been tested yet by Tom's Hardware so we can't confirm the veracity of these results


And yet an unsubstantiated rumor on untested unoptimized software and unreleased hardware doesn't prevent Tom's from basing an entire article on it.


The next part of the article said the charts below are from their own testing though. The benchmarkX numbers were borrowed. Read the ENTIRE paragraph.
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September 14, 2014 4:58:32 PM

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Leaks suggest the iPhone 6 is also still crippled by a pathetic 1GB of RAM (good luck multitasking with that). The fact that Apple hasn't mentioned memory in the press releases strongly imply this is indeed the case.
http://bgr.com/2014/08/18/iphone-6-rumors-ram-memory/




Read this aloud, "1GB of RAM is easily capable of running the desktop version of Windows 7/8."

Now remember, not everything is Android and insanely memory hungry. WP is the leader when it comes to performing well with lower amounts of memory, but iOS is not bad and if Apple is doing their job and optimizing, iOS8 should run well on 1GB of RAM.



7/8 can run on 1GB but it certainly should not. It is not smooth nor is it fun. I have tried. Even 2GB of RAM is cutting it close.

My main problem is that everyone was touting the 64Bit Apple CPU yet it is pointless with 1GB of system RAM. The biggest benefits of 64Bit is that the OS can allocate more than 4GB and the apps can access more than 2GB (without the need of PAE of course which even still limits it to 4GB).

Overall it shows that Apple is still behind the curve. The S6 is going to be a 64Bit CPU, probably 3GB+ system RAM, rumors of a 4K display but most likely a 5.5 inch QHD screen and even the possibility of it having the same wrap around screen as the Galaxy Edge.

This just shows that it is the same fluff Apple always does. They finally catch up and tout it as revolutionary when in fact it is not. NFC is not new. Hell my phone has NFC (S4) and I can even share movies between Galaxy phones. And it is almost 2 years old.

Still though people flock like sheep to the iPhone as if it is Gods gift to man.

On another note, I have been playing with WP8.1 and I like it so far. Smooth and fast. As well it has made me realize that the iPhone is babies first phone.


I agree with most everything you said, but there's something you forgot to write/think of. Android is Java based, while IOS i C based. C is much more efficient than java, and by far. Which is the reason why IOS runs mostly on-par with android phones with 2, 3 times the RAM.

I'm no Apple fan boy, and i mostly hate the fact that they always claim to be revolutionary, while they are most of the time, only making better implementations of ideas that are already there (1st iphone vs other touch phones, 1st ipod vs other mp3 players, and so on). But i don't see a java-based OS take the advantage over the efficiency of C-based any time soon.
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September 14, 2014 4:58:45 PM

sorry for the double post
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September 14, 2014 5:52:44 PM

Max_x2 said:
I agree with most everything you said, but there's something you forgot to write/think of. Android is Java based, while IOS i C based. C is much more efficient than java, and by far. Which is the reason why IOS runs mostly on-par with android phones with 2, 3 times the RAM.

Not quite.

While Google strongly encourages developers to use the ADK which is Java-based ("In general, you should only use the NDK if it is essential to your app—never because you simply prefer to program in C/C++"), a large chunk of the most popular Android apps use the NDK which is C-based - I think it was something like 60% for games.
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September 14, 2014 6:18:14 PM

If we are talking programming language, then Windows Phone OS will be best in these regards. Windows Phone applications are mainly written in C# with a much better library than Objective C. Execution varies, but C# will be kinder when developing on varying pieces of hardware because it can compile hardware specific.
Also Android started to allow developers to write in C++ so efficiency is no longer really a strong point.
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September 14, 2014 6:45:32 PM

Did nobody read the graphs or article? It says the 6 and 5s outperformed the other phones on high quality settings by a decent amount. You say your quad cores are better because they can run easier/simpler things better. Idk about you but I don't benchmark my pc on medium settings and say it's better than the best pc out there.
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September 16, 2014 11:23:20 PM

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think if you watch the keynote again, you would realize that Tim Cook and all the other presenters were comparing iPhone 6 to the original iPhone instead of comparing it to iPhone 5S. That's where you get all these astronomical numbers.
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September 22, 2014 7:11:22 PM

What the hell apple as if no one will notice
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