Apple's A5X Beats Tegra 3 in Graphics, But Not in Pure CPU Performance

From DailyTech: Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) new iPad 3 processor, the A5X, has been pitted against a top-of-the-line Android chip from NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA), the Tegra 3 in the real world. The Tegra 3 is found in the Transformer Prime, the flagship Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) tablet from ASUSTEK Computer, Inc. (TPE:2357).

Early reviews and analysis commentaries from various parties were rather light on hard performance numbers for the CPU. But the folks over at Laptop Magazine have dropped a full set of CPU and GPU benchmarks on the iPad 3 and evaluated how it performed versus the Tegra 3.

In GLBenchmark 2.1, the A5X is a beast. Apple's tablet system-on-a-chip (SoC) is thought to pack a PowerVR SGX543MP4+ (the same chip found in the Sony Corp.'s (TYO:6758) PlayStation Vita). Apple wasn't kidding when it said the chip was four times as fast as the Tegra 3. In a huge win for Imagination Technologies plc. (LON:IMG), the GPU is actually close to 5 times as fast as Tegra 3's GeForce derived mobile GPU.

Ironically, while graphics veteran NVIDIA languishes in graphics, it hits back equally hard in the CPU department. The Tegra 3 outperformed the A5X more than 2-fold in the GeekBench benchmark, which examines various CPU performance metrics. The only victory for Apple came in the stream test.

Overall, these results are not surprising. Both the A5X and Tegra 3 use the licensed Cortex-A9 design from ARM Holdings Plc. (LON:ARM). And the A5X has two cores, while the Tegra 3 is a quad-core design. Now, the comparison isn't exactly apples and apples, as the Tegra 3 in the Transformer Prime is clocked at 1.3 GHz, where as the iPad's chip is clocked at 1 GHz. Thus the A5X may be actually a bit more efficient on a per-core basis, albeit weaker overall in raw power.

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