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iPad 2: GPU Benchmarked with Impressive Gains
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The resolution between the Xoom and the iPad 2 is no where near differential as you've described.
Do you have any concept of the time it takes to go from starting a semiconductor design to shipping a fabbed chip in bulk?
It doesn't sound like you do so I'll explain it for you: It takes 12-18 months.
Unless Apple's competitors are reaching the final stages of production using this same chip design, it's going to be many, many months of waiting for a comparable tablet. Given that if there were tablets coming soon using this GPU we probably would have heard about it, if I were you, I wouldn't my breath
Yep, no where near it.
Why all the excuses for the Xoom anyway? It was Motorolla's decision to put a higher-res screen in the Xoom to out-spec the iPad, but it has poor viewing angles. It's better in one way, but worse in another.... therefore, it's really a wash in the end.
Not a tablet of course, but we have heard about it :
http://www.sizzlingbit.com/2011/01/...-core-processor-multi-touchscreen-gpu-camera/
These PowerVR chips aren't Apple exclusives. I think a few manufacturers bought into the Tegra 2 hype though and nVidia's usual trouncing of anything PowerVR.
The mobile market is shaping up great for hardware makers.
I think it has to do with some Apple people trying to bring it up as a failure based on a purely GPU benchmark. Because 1 aspect of the tablet isn't up to snuff (and who would've thought that about nVidia graphics silicon...) doesn't mean the whole is bad per say.
If the discussion had stuck to what this benchmark actually was, you wouldn't see any people trying to "apologize" for Motorola. Heck, they're big and grown up, they can spin this themselves.
It shouldn't be much of a surprise - nVidia has no clue how to make power-efficient GPUs. Their designers are much happier figuring out how to fit as many power connectors onto their cards as possible.
The difference in resolution is between xoom and iPad is very small; it has minuscule effect on these benchmarks.
I think the higher resolution choice was gimmicky. A decision to "outdo" apple. But of course given the small screens, and the slight difference in resolution of the two devices, it makes little difference.
Its all a gimmick to get people to list superior stats and make an argument that their choice of tablet is better.
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Hmm.. I wasn't expecting this much of a boost! How does the iPhone 4 fare?
I imagine this is much faster than the n3DS.. Will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the ngp.. It does make me think backing apples portables right now makes sense.. They'll likely leapfrog anything in the market again next year. I hope the big game devs are thinking about iPad now.
Hmm.. I wasn't expecting this much of a boost! How does the iPhone 4 fare?
I imagine this is much faster than the n3DS.. Will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the ngp.. It does make me think backing apples portables right now makes sense.. They'll likely leapfrog anything in the market again next year. I hope the big game devs are thinking about iPad now.
The NGP is announced as having the same GPU in a quad core version (iPad 2 uses the SGX543MP2, NGP is going to use the SGX543MP4) so it's probably going to be quite even unless you have enough parallelism in your graphics code to take advantage of those extra cores.
Maybe PowerVR has a stigma attached to its name from the days of their desktop based tile-rendering hardware that got severely trounced by 3Dfx, but it is a surprise to me.
That is good to know, Thanks. iPlayer on the AppleTV would get my money.
I have been eying the refurbished AppleTV 2.
I don't think it was gimmicky. Given the choice, and everything else being equal, I'd rather have 30% more resolution than a 30% faster framerate: I spend most of my time reading webpages, etc., and very little time playing 3d games. If the iP4 hadn't gone with the retina screen, it would have had a screaming framerate...but obviously the screen was more important.
Now obviously, everything else *isn't* equal, including that the framerate increase is a lot more than 30%. And that the xoom seems to be more of a beta device. But I don't think it's gimmicky to opt for resolution at the expense of framerate.
You really think watching movies in 1080 vs 760 resolution on that sized screen will be significantly different?
Its a good device for the price. And as I said the upgrade helped a bit with netflix. I think the Apple TV tries harder to maintain better resolution while the PS3 gives up and quickly drops down. Keeping better resolution should be applauded but if its not buffered enough then you get the stuttering when the internet slows down.
But when the internet is off peak hours I still use netflix on Apple TV.
I actually have both an Apple TV and an airport express hooked up to the same entertainment system. The Apple TV gets used for video but I tend to use the express for audio for two reasons:
1. I have a choice of sound fields and I choose 5 channel stereo for music and a cinema surround sound for movies. By using both devices I do not have to toggle that back and forth.
2. I have two zones. Zone 2 is a set of speakers outdoors. The problem is that my receiver cannot send digital audio out to one 2. I need analog and the express can do that. Apple TV uses either the HDMI or optical for audio. There are receivers that can send digital audio to both zones but I do nto feel like buying another receiver. I found an extra express at OWC for $69. I think it was refurbished or open box.
so 1 synthetic benchmark says the xoom is a total failure?
what happens if i find a benchmark that says the ipad 2 is slower?
oh here is one!
http://gadgetu.net/motorola-xoom-vs-ipad-2-browser-benchmarks/
sunspider is more "real life" than a "GL" benchmark
all these arguments are completely retarded, the xoom still has more value in terms of features, expandability, camera quality than the ipad will ever have
both tablets being $600-$700 are still total crap for what you get, the ipad 2 and xoom (and any other teg2 tablet) is still beaten by a netbook in terms of graphical and processing performance (look up Sony Y series with the E350 Zacate CPU, it will blow any tablet out of the water for $200 less)
hell even for $270 the Acer 522 with an AMD C50 will kill any tablet in terms of functionality and it has HDMI Out! with 3x usb and a card reader.
not on the tab itself but when both are hooked up to HDMI and a 72" LED LCD it sure as hell will make a difference
EDIT:
here we go, found the graph (an E350 power laptop or netbook can be had for $369 but most are $399-$499)
what happens if i find a benchmark that says the ipad 2 is slower?
oh here is one!
http://gadgetu.net/motorola-xoom-vs-ipad-2-browser-benchmarks/
sunspider is more "real life" than a "GL" benchmark
all these arguments are completely retarded, the xoom still has more value in terms of features, expandability, camera quality than the ipad will ever have
both tablets being $600-$700 are still total crap for what you get, the ipad 2 and xoom (and any other teg2 tablet) is still beaten by a netbook in terms of graphical and processing performance (look up Sony Y series with the E350 Zacate CPU, it will blow any tablet out of the water for $200 less)
hell even for $270 the Acer 522 with an AMD C50 will kill any tablet in terms of functionality and it has HDMI Out! with 3x usb and a card reader.
not on the tab itself but when both are hooked up to HDMI and a 72" LED LCD it sure as hell will make a difference
EDIT:
here we go, found the graph (an E350 power laptop or netbook can be had for $369 but most are $399-$499)
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I just want to say thank you, you've given me a good laugh. Have you actually looked at that article you linked to? Have you seen the difference in Sun Spider benchmark times? Why don't you have a quick read and come back here.
Ok, so you saw that iPad took 2121.7ms and the Xoom took 2109.4ms? You're right, the Xoom is faster. It is 12 milliseconds faster. Do you have an appreciation for what 12 milliseconds is? It is an imperceivably short period of time, about 1/60th of the time it takes for you to blink your eye. Certainly a "real-life" performance difference… You will need to try harder there
Hardly anyone wants a netbook these days, they're simply not good. Just look at the recent sales data for netbooks - they're plummeting
EDIT
Here we go, found a graph of netbook sales figures. Only goes up to Sept 2010, but it's quite clear where the trend is going… http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/retail_pc_notebook_sales_fall_analyst_blames_ipad/
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the GL benchmark says ~4x faster, this benchmark says not much faster at all, that was my point, do you understand?
are you kidding me? ive been using the hell out of my netbook for quite some time, its the best $300 ultra portable machine ive bought in a while, i even upgraded the thing to a 120GB SSD and now its blazing fast, ive watched 2 movies back to back on it through HDMI on BATTERY!. ive taken the thing everywhere and even "recovered" a wep key along the way. saying its not good just sounds like your completely ignorant
Blah Blah Blah Xoom Xoom Xoom
Here's the deal. You want a Xoom, get a Xoom. You want the iPad, get it.
I have a feeling that more people will opt for the iPad. Just like Macs, iPods, iPhones, etc., Apple products "just work". And even if the specs/speed were comparable, people like things that "just work". And it seems as though the iPad 2's speed make them work even better.
I am sure that future Android devices will be better and faster, but catching up, with Apple's stranglehold on components, and their head start with tablets, it's going to be very tough. Sorry geeks.
Here's the deal. You want a Xoom, get a Xoom. You want the iPad, get it.
I have a feeling that more people will opt for the iPad. Just like Macs, iPods, iPhones, etc., Apple products "just work". And even if the specs/speed were comparable, people like things that "just work". And it seems as though the iPad 2's speed make them work even better.
I am sure that future Android devices will be better and faster, but catching up, with Apple's stranglehold on components, and their head start with tablets, it's going to be very tough. Sorry geeks.
Umm... it's showing that the Xoom is 20ms faster... that means nothing. I've seen the iPad at ~2020ms which would put it as faster, it varies a little. Ultimately both of them are on par in that benchmark.
Yeah... no. It offers better quality still photos due to higher mega-pixel cameras, more RAM which means nothing in itself, and it offers a USB port, (micro?) HDMI port, and an SD card slot.
So, if you have some niche use for a slate that involves taking many photos, then perhaps the Xoom is better value for you, but for most, I imagine not.
The RAM means nothing, more RAM on Android 3 doesn't necessarily mean better performance than 512MB on iOS 4. If they were both running Android 3, I'd say yeah, for sure, but they're not.
And, those last three things are actually cons for me, not pros. Maybe someone wants a USB port, HDMI port, and SD card slot, but I don't. I'll barely EVER use a USB port or HDMI port on one of these, so why do I want dedicated ports for them? I don't.
I prefer the way Apple does it, if I plan on watching 1080p video, I'll pull out my HDMI accessory and plug it into the ONLY port on my device. SD card slot? Won't ever use it or buy one.
My point? Not everyone considers value what you consider value, and in my case, the iPad 2 is much more valuable -- it's lighter, thinner, has better battery life (and GPU performance, too), and probably the most important of all, it runs my OS of choice.
You do realise the iPad supports 1080p out?
This benchmark tests one element (javascript performance) of one app (Safari). Yes, iPads are used a lot for web browsing but they're also used for their apps, games amongst many other things. Significantly better graphics performance improves many areas of the iPad, not one specific area such as web browsing.
Have a look at the graph here and you'll see why the majority of consumers are agreeing with me. Note, the graph doesn't have data for the last 6 months - it's quite clear from the graph what that data will look like when it's available
And IOS 4.3 is not even optimized for the A5 and its GPU yet...just wait till IOS 5.0 comes out....and all hell will break lose!
Not so sure about that - speed increases aren't that big a deal unless they change how you use the device. It will be a real iPad 2 when they bring the weight down even more, eliminate the screen glare, double the screen PPI, make the cameras much nicer, etc.
