Nvidia, Asus Question Apple's iPad and Tegra 3 Comparison
Apple threw up a comparison chart during the iPad keynote, and didn't bother to provide hard facts.
During the launch of the new iPad, Apple's Phil Schiller, senior VP of worldwide marketing, displayed a graph that made the quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 look like a pokey old man next to the Apple A5 chip and a towering A5X chip. In graphics performance alone, the A5X is reportedly 4x times faster than Tegra 3 -- even the A5 is twice as fast, according to Apple.
Of course, Schiller didn't provide any hard facts like benchmarks and footnotes -- he merely spouted a generalized "we're better" presentation and a pretty graph (lol at shadows). Naturally most of us -- including Nvidia -- questions those claims. As ZDNet muses, "any [benchmark] chart has more footnotes than a commercial for antidepressants."
Ken Brown, a spokesman for Nvidia, said the company was actually flattered to be called out by Apple. But as most have already agreed, the claims are "sketchy" without additional hard evidence.
"We don’t have the benchmark information," said Brown. "We have to understand what the application was that was used. Was it one or a variety of applications? What drivers were used? There are so many issues to get into with benchmark."
"At some point it will become more clear what the performance really is," he added, indicating that Nvidia plans to get its hands on an iPad 3 when it becomes available on March 16 to perform its own benchmarks. "For now, Apple has a really generic statement."
Nvidia will undoubtedly provide a different, more detailed set of results. Even more, there's speculation that Apple was trying to divert attention away from the fact that its A5X chip is only dual-core, whereas the Tegra 3 is "4-Plus-1." So like Nvidia, we want to see how Apple came up with the 4x performance claim.
"It's nice to hear Apple compare themselves to Tegra 3," Nvidia told Tom's in a statement. "It truly underscores the importance of graphics, which is what we've been saying all along."
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In the meantime, Asus has come out to bat for the Tegra 3, jumping on Twitter and stating, "New Apple #ipadhd to have a quad-core GPU. Darn! The ASUS Transformer's GPU is only 12-cores..."
Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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Of course, their claims of running Samaritas with a single kepler GPU is also questionable... ;)Reply
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Branden QUOTE: "Apple threw up a comparison chart during the iPad keynote, and didn't bother to provide hard facts."Reply
"threw up" is right. -
azathoth christoiOf course, their claims of running Samaritas with a single kepler GPU is also questionable...Reply
They didn't say it was going to be running at 30fps :)
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I expect these claims from Apple to be outright false advertisement. -
willard azathothThey didn't say it was going to be running at 30fps ----I expect these claims from Apple to be outright false advertisement.I'd be surprised if Apple were so dumb as to blatantly use false advertising. I'm guessing they used cherry picked test conditions to show the A5X as favorably as possible, and Tegra 3 as unfavorably as possible.Reply -
jefforange89 According to these benchmarks (http://www.anandtech.com/show/5163/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-nvidia-tegra-3-review/3), the A5 is 1.1-2x as fast as Tegra 3… so if the A5X is twice as powerful as the A5, then it would appear Apple's claims are accurate.Reply -
zzz_b Everybody talks about the resolution and graphics.Reply
I do not want to take anything away from Apple, the display must be very nice. The question is how will it be used? The HD movies are 1920x1080. Games are not there yet either.
Nobody is saying one word about USB, microSD, HDMI,... connectivity. I think these are very important too. -
icepick314 I'm more interested in how a tablet has more processing and graphics power than Xbox 360 or Playstation 3...Reply -
clivene09 icepick314I'm more interested in how a tablet has more processing and graphics power than Xbox 360 or Playstation 3...Reply
I read something about this too, and I think it stems from a max res of 1920X1080 on the game systems which is lower than the new Ipads display, and the fact that, I guess, the new Ipad has more RAM. Of course, its really an apples and oranges comparison.
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maxinexus hate everything that starts with i....so much restriction and control... "i" stands for apple not the individual Simply said: my way or the highway I chose highway.Reply