Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2nd Generation iPod Touch Faster than iPhone
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (16GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)
Except that I don't carry my PS3 with me on the train. Next, please.
MojoWill said:
Except that I don't carry my PS3 with me on the train. Next, please.
Well, I believe what you said and I have absolutely no experience in programming (although I know my way around hardware). I was just talking based on what I saw/heard on some developer interviews when the PSP was announced.
Most of them were saying that the PSP was very similar (although underpowered in comparison) to the PS2 and that the switch from PS2 development to PSP development would be a piece of cake.
Even some homebrew sites like Osix.net state that:
"The PSP's core is based around the MIPS R4000 core. It contains the CPU and FPU, as well as a vector unit (a coprocessor for vector and matrix operations). Together these components form the Allegrex CPU core. The CPU clock is adjustable to anywhere between 1Mhz and 333Mhz. Sony restrict developers to a maximum of 222Mhz to ensure the battery lasts for a reasonable amount of time. The CPU is paired with a dedicated media CPU, capable of hardware MP3, ATRAC3 and h.264 decoding. For graphics, the PSP sports a dedicated GPU, capable of lighting, skinning, subdivision, pixel operations, and a few other functions.
Main memory is 32mb, divided into 8mb for the kernel and 24mb for the currently running game. Video memory is 2mb. Overall this hardware is very similar to the PS2, which had a MIPS R5900 core, 2 vector units, 32mb of main ram and 4mb of video ram. Anyone familiar with coding for the PS2 should be fairly comfortable with the PSP."
I'm not doubting you, I'm just saying what I saw/heard.
Even so, the main point is that the iPhone and iPod Touch haven't been pushed to the limit so far. Games that take full advantage of the graphical capabilities of these devices are still a year away, at least.
The iPhone/Touch does have far superior graphical capabilities when compared to the PSone and the N64 as many developers have stated.
The devs just need time to learn how to push it to its limits, like any new piece of hardware.
I have ported a 3D racing game to the iPhone, this is totally unplayable on an old PowerMac G3 (400 MHz, Rage 128/16 MB), you need an iMac G4 at least. At the beginning of the project we were not sure if a port to iPhone was possible, but a first gen iPod touch handles that game very well.
While you may be right in terms of raw processor power, especially floating point performance, we were very surprised about the gfx speed.
Christian
Probably would have made more sense if you said PSP.
Doesn't matter though because your point doesn't make complete sense. Sure if you want to just play games then using a PSP makes the most sense. However the majority of Ipod Touch owners use it for games, email, browsing, calendar, etcIf I bought my Ipod just to listen to music I would have kept my Nano or bought a Classic.
True. Unfortunately that's just the nature of the beast. We can't really expect technology to come to a standstill because people want to buy new games for their touch/iphone. Pac Man would still be cutting edge if the gaming community thought like that.
Does anyone know when the next iPhone is supposed to come out?
I think I'm going to go over to my Apple Store and start waiting in line for it.
I think I'm going to go over to my Apple Store and start waiting in line for it.
a small point for clarity...
I thought it was agreed, we'd all be using the term "snappier" when referring to speed issues?
I thought it was agreed, we'd all be using the term "snappier" when referring to speed issues?
The floating point performance of the iPhone CPU isn't significantly worse than it's general integer performance. They're both around 2X to 3X slower than a PowerMac G3 (and the PowerMac would require a huge battery to run for an hour). But the VR graphics chip in an iPhone is a lot faster at Open GL than the graphics cards that came with the older PowerMacs, especially if an app can keep everything for a tile inside the texture caches.
.
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)
This is very interesting. I would have thought that the iPhone 3G would have gotten a processor upgrade as well. I didn't realize that Apple upgraded one but not the other. I guess that it has something to do with the later release date of the second generation iPod touch.
This is very interesting. I would have thought that the iPhone 3G would have gotten a processor upgrade as well. I didn't realize that Apple upgraded one but not the other. I guess that it has something to do with the later release date of the second generation iPod touch.
500MHz phones are pretty common.
Just some speeds of other phones for comparison:
Samsung i770: 400 MHz
HTC Touch models: 528 MHz
Samsung Omnia: 624 MHz
Samsung Omnia+: 806 MHz
ASUS P565: 800 MHz
Need to get stock battery sizes and advertised battery life, and do a comparison, but am too busy this morning.
It'd be interesting if a hacker upped their 3G speed and tested the difference in battery life. At about .45mW per Mhz for a typical ARM cpu, we should be able to figure it out.
Just some speeds of other phones for comparison:
Samsung i770: 400 MHz
HTC Touch models: 528 MHz
Samsung Omnia: 624 MHz
Samsung Omnia+: 806 MHz
ASUS P565: 800 MHz
Need to get stock battery sizes and advertised battery life, and do a comparison, but am too busy this morning.
It'd be interesting if a hacker upped their 3G speed and tested the difference in battery life. At about .45mW per Mhz for a typical ARM cpu, we should be able to figure it out.
I wonder how much different it feels playing a game at the 532MHz.
I have the iPod Touch 1st Gen and the games seem to function perfectly.
I have the iPod Touch 1st Gen and the games seem to function perfectly.
Does anyone know when the next iPhone is supposed to come out?
I think I'm going to go over to my Apple Store and start waiting in line for it.
LOL
Well-put.
Case in point
Here's a really good example of the difference it makes:
I just upgraded from a 1g to a 2g iPod touch, and one of the free games I previously played on the 1g, Keepy Uppy, is almost unplayable on the 2g now because it is so fast!
I don't know if it was the developer's intention or not, but it used to be like gentle lobs that would spin and bounce with enough time to time the next "kick", and now it animates so quickly it's much more difficult to keep the ball up for any real amount of time. My previous high score was 42, and now I find it hard to break ten!
Here's a really good example of the difference it makes:
I just upgraded from a 1g to a 2g iPod touch, and one of the free games I previously played on the 1g, Keepy Uppy, is almost unplayable on the 2g now because it is so fast!
I don't know if it was the developer's intention or not, but it used to be like gentle lobs that would spin and bounce with enough time to time the next "kick", and now it animates so quickly it's much more difficult to keep the ball up for any real amount of time. My previous high score was 42, and now I find it hard to break ten!
This is really annoying... There is no way I'm going to purchase another ipod ontop of the phone just to play games....
I say that the programers better stop blaming Apple and Get the Code in order to make it perform well on Both
I say that the programers better stop blaming Apple and Get the Code in order to make it perform well on Both
The funny thing is that I don't particularly care about games on the iPhone OS--the lack of a real control mechanism damps any possible enthusiasm that I might have had (I'm a big shooter fan and the iPhone interface is just not amenable to FPS-like games). However, there are two reasons why I would like a boost in CPU speed: (1) Safari Mobile rendering speed (although I have to wonder if the most significant bottleneck is simply the 128k EDGE network speed) and (2) because it's there--the practice of castrating a more capable CPU by underclocking it has always seemed lame to me, for example, the PSP would have been a far more powerful machine if Sony had released it with the CPU clocked at the real speed, letting developers decide how much oomph they needed for a certain game engine.
This sounds exactly like the arguments people use/used against the Wii. Different doesn't necessarily mean worse.
That said, I do not see the ipod Touch having anywhere near the success of the Wii game-wise, it is just interesting to compare your argument
That's like trying to blame game developers for the PC for having their game suck on some 1GHz Celeron, 128MB RAM, no GPU Comp. I mean come on,
Hardware changes dude. Even if they are the same chips just under/overclocked in the 1G vs. 2G ipod Touches, people who bought the last generation don't have as "cool" of a device. Period. This happens in EVERY technology-based industry/device. Get over it.
Maybe I'm missing something, but is the 2nd Gen Touch being clocked higher that much of an impediment to programming? As other's have mentioned, I would think most people could just target the lowest common denominator and if they have time, develop a more graphically intense version for the 2nd Gen Touch as a bonus. I don't think people necessarily lose out in such an approach.
In any case, if this kicks up enough fuss, I don't doubt that Apple will upclock the 1st Gen Touch and the iPhones slightly. If I'm not mistaken, the 2nd Gen Touch uses a new revision of the CPU, probably not die shrunk, just on a more mature process, like how Intel releases higher clock speed processors over time even though it's still 45nm. In such a case, it's highly unlikely we'll see the 1st Gen Touch and iPhones clock up to 532MHz due to power and thermal issues. However, something like 440MHz seems reasonable, 10% faster than the original 400MHz. Still not the 33% of the 2nd Gen Touch, but it might be enough in most cases.
And in regards to the performance difference between the 2nd Gen Touch and the other models being more than the CPU difference seems to suggest, it'd make sense if the GPU clock is tied to the bus speed. The bus would have gone up from 103MHz to 133MHz on the 2nd Gen Touch and the GPU is probably also at 133MHz. The RAM frequency may also be tied to the system bus, so everything is overclocked, not just the CPU.
The 2nd Gen Touch is probably Apple's version 1.5 of their handheld platform, while the other models are the 1.0 versions. I don't doubt that the next version of the iPhone and Touch will have completely refreshed hardware. Probably a dual core solution, ~600MHz clocks, possibly Cortex based, with a PowerVR SGX. They'll certainly need to keep pushing the envelope since Microsoft seems to be looking to release their own phone based on an nVidia SoC with a OpenGL ES 2.0 GeForce GPU.
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...eloping_nvidia_based_mobile_phone_report.html
Admittedly, Microsoft may not be much of a threat right now like Zune, but that's no reason to lose momentum.
In any case, if this kicks up enough fuss, I don't doubt that Apple will upclock the 1st Gen Touch and the iPhones slightly. If I'm not mistaken, the 2nd Gen Touch uses a new revision of the CPU, probably not die shrunk, just on a more mature process, like how Intel releases higher clock speed processors over time even though it's still 45nm. In such a case, it's highly unlikely we'll see the 1st Gen Touch and iPhones clock up to 532MHz due to power and thermal issues. However, something like 440MHz seems reasonable, 10% faster than the original 400MHz. Still not the 33% of the 2nd Gen Touch, but it might be enough in most cases.
And in regards to the performance difference between the 2nd Gen Touch and the other models being more than the CPU difference seems to suggest, it'd make sense if the GPU clock is tied to the bus speed. The bus would have gone up from 103MHz to 133MHz on the 2nd Gen Touch and the GPU is probably also at 133MHz. The RAM frequency may also be tied to the system bus, so everything is overclocked, not just the CPU.
The 2nd Gen Touch is probably Apple's version 1.5 of their handheld platform, while the other models are the 1.0 versions. I don't doubt that the next version of the iPhone and Touch will have completely refreshed hardware. Probably a dual core solution, ~600MHz clocks, possibly Cortex based, with a PowerVR SGX. They'll certainly need to keep pushing the envelope since Microsoft seems to be looking to release their own phone based on an nVidia SoC with a OpenGL ES 2.0 GeForce GPU.
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...eloping_nvidia_based_mobile_phone_report.html
Admittedly, Microsoft may not be much of a threat right now like Zune, but that's no reason to lose momentum.
If you are correct then you just answered the question I was just about to post regarding if the iphone 3g and 2nd gen touch shared the same processor with one just being overclocked by nearly a 1/3 percent increase in power or if the touch indeed does have an advanced, revised chip inside.
I've been patiently awaiting the time my t-mobile contract runs dry for nearly 2 years now and had planned on getting the 3g in january. Now my decision stems slightly further...go ahead and jump on that 3g in january or wait it out a mere 5 more months for wwdc where the phone may get a complete overhaul altogether. (Que the flamers: "yea and then wait another 5 months and never, yadda yadda..." oh shaddup!)
Hey, I've held on for 2 years, what's another 5 months?!
Dammit, can't I just have it all RIGHT NOW!?!
If only; not their style though.
I have a DVR, but the commercials, they're so pretty...
Anyways, I'm not just talking about commercials. I'm talking about what Steve has said over the last few months/year. Things like "iPhone without the phone," or "a gaming device."