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A19 vs. A19 Pro: iPhone 17 Chip Differences

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Apple introduced A19 and A19 Pro chips for the iPhone 17 lineup, with a total of three chip variants. The iPhone 17 uses the regular A19 chip, while the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro models have the A19 Pro. All of the chips are built on a more advanced 3-nanometer process.

a19-pro-chip.jpg

The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max have a higher-end A19 Pro chip with a 6-core GPU, and the iPhone Air has an A19 Pro chip with one less GPU core. Here are all the differences, according to Apple:
  • A19 - 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU
  • A19 Pro (iPhone Air) - 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU
  • A19 Pro (iPhone 17 Pro) - 6-core CPU, 6-core GPU
All of the A19 chips have "Neural Accelerators" for each GPU core that boost daily workflows and the performance of local AI models, such as on-device Siri. There's also an updated 16-core Neural Engine, an updated display engine, and an updated image signal processor.

Apple says that the A19 Pro chip has the fastest CPU in any smartphone and the most advanced GPU yet. The CPU includes 50 percent larger last-level cache size, improved front-end bandwidth and improved branch prediction. The GPU features increased math rates, unified image compression, and second-generation dynamic caching. The Neural Accelerators offer 4x the peak compute of the A18 Pro.

The iPhone 17 Pro models have an updated thermal architecture that uses vapor chamber cooling, further enhancing the performance of the A19 Pro chip. With the new chip and the updated thermal design, the CPU and GPU in the A19 Pro deliver 40 percent better sustained performance than the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 models.

Apple also included 12GB RAM in the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 models, while the iPhone 17 has 8GB.

Article Link: A19 vs. A19 Pro: iPhone 17 Chip Differences
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/09/iphone-17-a19-chip/
Paddle1 said:
It's interesting that the 16 series didn't have something like this despite them saying it was built for Apple Intelligence.
Click to expand...

Yup, i can entirely imagine the 16 series being hardware gated out of AI features in the future.

WHich isn't necessarily unreasonable if these are new features being released in say 2028 and by then a 4 year old chip is too old; but it's going to be a huge problem if the features advertised with the 16 series only get released in 2028 and doesn't work on the phone it got advertised with.
 
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frownface said:
Yup, i can entirely imagine the 16 series being hardware gated out of AI features in the future.

WHich isn't necessarily unreasonable if these are new features being released in say 2028 and by then a 4 year old chip is too old; but it's going to be a huge problem if the features advertised with the 16 series only get released in 2028 and doesn't work on the phone it got advertised with.
Click to expand...
I imagine that for exactly this reason, Apple will be sure to enable all the promised features of Apple Intelligence on the A18 devices. It will simply be that the performance will be much less that on the A19 devices where AI can harness bother the neural engine and the GPU "neural accelerators" rather than just the neural engine.
 
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I guess we'll have to wait for the teardown/die shots to know what the improvements are. A18 Pro already had twice the L2 & last level cache compared to the A18, plus additional L2 cache on the efficiency cores (that the A18 didn't have).

The A18 had 12 MB last level cache and the A18 Pro had 24 MB, so it would seem the A19 Pro has 36 MB.
In terms of L2 the A18 had 8 MB for the performance cores and the A18 Pro had 16 MB for the performance cores and a further 4 MB for the eficciency cores. Since L2 wasn't mentioned by Apple, I'm guessing that won't be changing.
 
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How do the A19 and A19 Pro chips compare to the Mx chips in the Macs? Does anyone know?

Are they 50%-60%-70% equivalent to a base M4 chip? Or 80% equivalent to an M3 Max chip?
 
Since A19 and A19 Pro tech will likely form the basis for Apple's M5 chip in upcoming Mac computer models, it should be very interesting to see the various tweaks and performance enhancement improvements that Apple put inside these A19 and A19 Pro chips.
 
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Comparing 17 pro/17 (A19 pro/A19) to 14 pro/15(both A16 Bionic) on Apple's website, it seems like cpu wise, A19/A19 pro are both 40% faster, gpu wise, A19 pro is 2x while A19 is 1.8x.

Probably means A19 is close to A19 pro in cpu
 
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Expecting all of them to be very powerful. Don't think anyone will notice from having just the A19 and not the 'Pro' version on the base model.
 
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Paddle1 said:
It's interesting that the 16 series didn't have something like this despite them saying it was built for Apple Intelligence.
Click to expand...
It *was* built for Apple Intelligence. That doesn’t preclude making improvements every year.
 
happosai said:
If the iphone 17 pro A19 Pro (iPhone 17 Pro) - 6-core CPU, 6-core GPU requires a vapor chamber to lessen the thermals. Lessening 1 core A19 Pro (iPhone Air) - 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU don't need the vapor chamber?
Click to expand...
There’s a number of other differences, but the biggest one is the thinness of the Air, which, like the m4 iPad pro, results in better heat dissipation.
 
Paddle1 said:
It's interesting that the 16 series didn't have something like this despite them saying it was built for Apple Intelligence.
Click to expand...
why? its hardware feature. its not like they can come up with an idea and put in production in 3 months. AMD only started adding AI accelerators with previous GPU generation. only NV had a headstart (and it wasn't really meant for general purpose AI models back then - it was meant just for their upscaling technology)

giving that apple intelligence was announced just a year ago, having proper dedicated hardware just year later is crazy fast silicon development pace.
 
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it also explains why theres rumors of M5-based everything (Macs, iPads, Vision refresh) and there was no reuse of A18 in the current iPhone lineup
they've made fundamental changes to the AI accelerators and want to put it to widespread use everywhere at once.

M5 MBPs will be absolute AI monsters. think 4070/4080 AI performance with 128 GB (maybe 192 GB even) of memory.
 
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Taq'aix said:
The 16 series turned out to be the most lackluster iPhone upgrade ever.
Click to expand...
Yeah, though it’s a very mature product segment at this point so I’m not sure what else they could be doing.

I went from the 13PM to the 16PM and the only thing kinda noticeable was that the 16PM was a little lighter and had a slightly marginally better screen.

I’m kinda getting the usual FOMO about the 17PM but I know once I get it, it’ll just be the same iPhone running the same iOS with a bigger camera bump and weirder colors.
 
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