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Apple's New A6X iPad Chip Adopts PowerVR SGX 554MP4 Graphics

pgiguere1

pgiguere1

macrumors 68020
May 28, 2009
2,167
1,200
Montreal, Canada
For reference, the Xbox 360's GPU is 240 GFLOPS and the PS3's GPU is 230 GFLOPS.

EDIT: Sorry the PS3's GPU is not 230 GFLOPS, that's its CPU. I can't find a reliable number for its GPU, it seems to be debated about a lot. Sony originally stated 1.8 TFLOPS but that was obviously inflated.
 
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firedept

firedept

macrumors 603
Jul 8, 2011
6,277
1,130
Somewhere!
Just picked up my iPad 4. Had bought the iPad 3 the day before they announced the 4. Never expected the upgrade. Even saved $20 as they are cheaper. As I am not a gamer and have never had an iPad before this will be new to me. I will be using mine for web development for the iPad. Should work just fine.
 
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macchiato2009

macrumors 65816
Aug 14, 2009
1,258
1
i held the new new iPad (4) today, and i noticed that it was much warmer than the new iPad (3) :(

ok, twice the power of its precedessor, but with a new compromise on comfort again :(
 
scrap104

scrap104

macrumors regular
Dec 30, 2010
118
41
UTC−05:00
I'm perfectly fine with my 3rd generation iPad. A redesign, a quad-core CPU, and 2GB of RAM is all I ask for in the 2013 iPad.
 
Mord

Mord

macrumors G4
Aug 24, 2003
10,091
23
UK
Fab, I suspected it was something other than a higher clocked 543MP4.
 
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iSunrise

macrumors 6502
May 11, 2012
382
118
Aluminum213 said:
I remember that exactly, they said the iPad 4 would be slower because the A6 chip would only have a triple GPU
Click to expand...
Which would´ve been ridiculous to begin with, since we have lots more battery space on the iPad. What this does mean is that Apple will continue like this in the future. Design or custom-design a new CPU part for the iPhone (flagship product) and add a powerful and up-to-date GPU portion to it (PowerVR Series 6 (Rogue) I can´t wait) for their next iPad.

The only problem i could see is that app developers now need to target a lot of different platforms and that may hinder games or powerful apps potential and progress a lot.
 
shartypants

shartypants

macrumors 6502a
Jul 27, 2010
922
60
Benchmarks are one thing, but I would rather see a side by side comparison with different apps running to see if there is really a noticeable difference for what we use them for.
 
Mord

Mord

macrumors G4
Aug 24, 2003
10,091
23
UK
MacRumors said:
Ultimately it looks like the A6X is the SoC that the iPad needed to really deliver good gaming performance at its native resolution. I would not be surprised to see more game developers default to 2048 x 1536 on the new iPad rather than picking a lower resolution and enabling anti-aliasing. The bar has been set for this generation and we've seen what ARM's latest GPU can do, now the question is whether or not NVIDIA will finally be able to challenge Imagination Technologies when it releases Wayne/Tegra 4 next year.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt it, Rouge, their next gen graphics core is such a massive leap ahead that nvidea would really have to do something unexpected to be competitive.
 
B

bertman

macrumors member
May 28, 2008
62
0
Laurel, Maryland
Remember when the first G4 Mac to break a GFLOP came out - the commercial with the tanks surrounding it because it was "so powerful, the US Government classified it as a weapon." Now our iPads' graphics chips can do 76.8 GFLOPS.

"What are we going to do today, Brain?"
 
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mjtomlin

Guest
Jan 19, 2002
384
0
shoes222 said:
Considering this is one of the fastest Apple products to be discontinued...they should offer a $100 trade-in upgrade program for the 4th gen iPad or SOMETHING. It would create goodwill among the hardcore base, and then they could take customers' iPad 3's which are in perfectly good condition and slap them on the refurb store. It would such easy money lining Apple's pockets, I don't know why they don't do this.
Click to expand...

Sell your iPad 3 on eBay if you want to get the new one! It is still worth more than $399, which is what Apple is selling a brand new iPad 2 for.
 
swarmster

swarmster

macrumors 6502a
Jun 1, 2004
641
114
shoes222 said:
Considering this is one of the fastest Apple products to be discontinued...
Click to expand...

lol, what? Completely ignoring all of Apple's history and just looking at the last few years: early-2009 and late-2009 Mac mini, early-2009 iMac, early-2008 iPod touch, early-2008 and late-2008 and early-2009 iPod shuffle, late-2008 MacBook Air, late-2008 MacBook Pro, mid-2006 and early-2007 Mac Pro, and early-2006 and mid-2006 Cinema Displays all give you one big group "Hello."

And considering they're still selling two products in the same family that are less powerful, the 'discontinued' argument is weak to begin with.


profets said:
I've owned an iPad 3rd gen since launch and think this is awesome news.

I like what they've done to update the iPad, and it doesn't mean mine will suddenly stop working.
Click to expand...

Exactly. It's great that they're moving to an update-when-ready schedule for themselves. Means you're always getting the best product possible at any given time. In fact, if they went even faster and moved to more of a once-every-6-months schedule, even better! Then when I'm looking to upgrade in a couple years, I'll have 4 generations worth of upgrades to enjoy!
 
D

darkplanets

macrumors 6502a
Nov 6, 2009
853
1
pgiguere1 said:
For reference, the Xbox 360's GPU is 240 GFLOPS and the PS3's GPU is 230 GFLOPS.
Click to expand...

Pretty impressive when you consider the size and power consumption of these devices. Make no mistake though that a gaming PC could clean a consoles house with GFLOPS. An ATI 7970 has 3.9 TFLOPS single and 947 GFLOP dual, and if you want to throw down some cash, you can get 4.3/1.01 TFLOPS from the "GHz" edition (ie, higher clocked). If you OC these cards, who knows what you'd get. Keep in mind you can also crossfire these. Putting two of these together should about make enough heat to equal an xbox 360.
 
jav6454

jav6454

macrumors Core
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,257
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
commander.data said:
Anand's chart is kind of misleading because he is focusing on ALU performance which incidentally is the main thing that changes between the SGX554MP and SGX543MP. When you go from a SGX543MP2 to a SGX543MP4 everything doubles including the ALU, TMU and ROP count. Going from the SGX543MP to SGX554MP only the ALU count doubles. As such, the 2x performance increase from A5X to A6X is very nuanced. Due to doubled ALU count and a small clock speed increase, the theoretical ALU increase for shaders is actually greater than 2x. However, the ROP count has not increased and so fill rate has only increased modestly due to clock speed only, which means that on a raw pixel pushing measure, the iPad 4 still hasn't fully accounted for the 4x increase in pixel count over the iPad 2. And so compared to the iPad 3, developers can't just double everything but will have to be more selective over how and what graphical effects they increase.
Click to expand...

Now that I think of it, going from the SGX543 to the SGX554 there has to be an inherent architecture change which can also help in performance. However, the inherent argument of mine still stands, if the SGX554 (assuming no architecture change) is just double everything of the SGX543, why not use a single SGX554 in the iPhone 5 (assuming you want same performance but less space consumption hence lower TDP)?

However, assuming more performance with the extra core in the iPhone 5, why not simply clock the SGX554 higher? Same 20% higher to make up for the lost core.


commander.data said:
For the iPhone 5, since the resolution didn't increase significantly over the previous iPhones, Apple probably could have used a SGX554MP2 to double ALU performance over the iPhone 4S and use a small clock speed bump for a modest increase in fill rate to account for the increased resolution. However, risk may have been an issue. The iPhone 5 had to ship this fall and with an already new CPU architecture, going with a tried and true SGX543MP design was the safer option. The iPad 4 was already a bit of a surprise and didn't necessarily have to ship this year since there several iDevices that continue to use the 30-pin connector anyways, so Apple had some flexibility to take additional risk with the SGX554MP in the A6X.
Click to expand...


Could have, but the risk factor is not the issue. There was a risk factor with the A4, A5 and A6X chips since they are all new tech chips. The only safe bets have been the A5X and A6 (half a safe bet). Considering the iPhone 5 gave only a slight pixel increase (960x640 to 1136x640), the SGX543 MP2 still can easily handle such resolution. However, assuming Apple wanted that extra performance boost to keep up with game dynamics it makes since Apple added the extra core. I for one would have just used an SGX554 MP2 and give extra graphics processing and used the extra space in the A6 (since one core would have been missing) to lower the chip footprint. Perhaps even add a bit more L1 & L2 caches giving a enhanced CPU capacity. More RAM (1536 MB would have been nice; not that I'm complaining ay 1024MB) could have been added.
 
M

mjtomlin

Guest
Jan 19, 2002
384
0
iSunrise said:
The only problem i could see is that app developers now need to target a lot of different platforms and that may hinder games or powerful apps potential and progress a lot.
Click to expand...

That's what OpenGL and OpenCL are for (PowerVR GPUs are OpenCL compliant).

Developers write their code once and it gets translated on the fly and sent to whatever processor is available. No need to recompile to see performance gains either.
 
J

Jeans89

macrumors regular
Oct 1, 2012
116
5
Helsinki, Finland
wackymacky said:
What about iPhone 5 owners?

I might hold on to my 4s a little longer.
Click to expand...

I upgraded 4S to 5 and having used the new one now several weeks, I am not sure was the upgrade worth of the cost. 4S is a terrific phone and 5 don't add much to that. Slightly bigger screen and a new design. But on the other hand, both models have nice design. Perform wice I think 4S has all the power I needed.
 
nutmac

nutmac

macrumors 603
Mar 30, 2004
6,057
7,320
Aluminum213 said:
iPad 3 owners tears coming in 3...2...
Click to expand...

Although increased performance is great, especially for Safari rendering and games, I have rarely considered my iPad 3 to be anywhere near slow.

Looking at iFixIt teardown (with all the unused spaces and all) and very short list of changes (can literally be counted with 1 hand), I can't help but think that iPad 4 is a rushed and minor update to iPad 3.

Having said that, if I was running Apple, I probably would've never released iPad 3. I purchased iPad 2 on day 1 (and upgraded to iPad 3 on day 1). And I would've been perfectly fine using iPad 2 for 20 months (March 2011 to November 2012).

I look forward to slimmer, lighter, faster, and longer battery life iPad 5 next year.
 
R

rcalderoni

macrumors member
Jun 21, 2011
98
34
shoes222 said:
Considering this is one of the fastest Apple products to be discontinued...they should offer a $100 trade-in upgrade program for the 4th gen iPad or SOMETHING. It would create goodwill among the hardcore base, and then they could take customers' iPad 3's which are in perfectly good condition and slap them on the refurb store. It would such easy money lining Apple's pockets, I don't know why they don't do this.
Click to expand...

Your iPad 3 didn't become slower just because they came out with a new one.
 
diamond.g

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,114
2,444
OBX
Mord said:
I highly doubt it, Rouge, their next gen graphics core is such a massive leap ahead that nvidea would really have to do something unexpected to be competitive.
Click to expand...

Well, it would be interesting to see if Nvidia could shrink Kepler (GF600) down enough to fit the bill. Right now Tegra is using GF6/7 era tech...

----------
jav6454 said:
Now that I think of it, going from the SGX543 to the SGX554 there has to be an inherent architecture change which can also help in performance. However, the inherent argument of mine still stands, if the SGX554 (assuming no architecture change) is just double everything of the SGX543, why not use a single SGX554 in the iPhone 5 (assuming you want same performance but less space consumption hence lower TDP)?

However, assuming more performance with the extra core in the iPhone 5, why not simply clock the SGX554 higher? Same 20% higher to make up for the lost core.





Could have, but the risk factor is not the issue. There was a risk factor with the A4, A5 and A6X chips since they are all new tech chips. The only safe bets have been the A5X and A6 (half a safe bet). Considering the iPhone 5 gave only a slight pixel increase (960x640 to 1136x640), the SGX543 MP2 still can easily handle such resolution. However, assuming Apple wanted that extra performance boost to keep up with game dynamics it makes since Apple added the extra core. I for one would have just used an SGX554 MP2 and give extra graphics processing and used the extra space in the A6 (since one core would have been missing) to lower the chip footprint. Perhaps even add a bit more L1 & L2 caches giving a enhanced CPU capacity. More RAM (1536 MB would have been nice; not that I'm complaining ay 1024MB) could have been added.
Click to expand...
There is always the 'S' cycle...
 
R

Rosto

macrumors newbie
Apr 12, 2012
19
4
So, it sucks even more now that I bought an 'new' 3rd gen iPad three months ago.... ;)

Well.. still like mine though!!
 
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