iPad 2 GPU Performancs Vs Motorola XOOM ------ iPad SGX543MP2 GPU is a *beast*

[fizzwinkus]

it's impossible to emphasize how important good software is. if you took the maemo (and believe me, i really wanted a 770 at the time), and put it in an ipad 2, it would not do nearly as well. it would do better, but the real key to apple's success is their software.

ios is limited right now, but it will continue to advance and is surprisingly extensible right now. a couple months ago, i wanted to take an image off a website, copy it to a different host, and embed it in a website post. my default reaction is always to go to the desktop for something like that, but i had safari and an ftp client on the ipad - why not? it took a tiny bit longer to do than a desktop, but was perfectly smooth and useable. not bad for a 1.3 lb system with 10 hour battery life.

 

[Meanee]

To be quite honest, the performance does not surprise me.

I am a huge Android fan, and I own an iPad 2. The GPU in iPad 2 is the same GPU used in that new PSP (NGP I think?), so obviously, there is a LOT of graphical muscle in there.

I do not doubt that nVidia would be able to make something that will outperform A5 eventually. They have a ton of experience in GPU field, but Tegra and Tegra 2 took their time to reach the market. For nVidia, they are more or less 1st gen GPUs, while GPU in A5 is a next gen, from experienced manufacturer.

There's no need to make this iPad vs Xoom. It's SGX vs Tegra. What started as a benchmark comparison, quickly became "LULZ Xoom sux0rs" and so on and so forth.

 

[stripedsnake]

After playing with the Xoom - I was severely disappointed with the UI - that alone turned me off. A tablet should be intuitive. It took a lot of random tapping to figure out the menu structure and such. I shouldnt have to read a manual to jump right in. Apple gets that - iOS just works without futzing around.

 

[Meanee]

After playing with the Xoom - I was severely disappointed with the UI - that alone turned me off. A tablet should be intuitive. It took a lot of random tapping to figure out the menu structure and such. I shouldnt have to read a manual to jump right in. Apple gets that - iOS just works without futzing around.

Not sure where you had a problem. After 2 minutes, I felt right at home with it. The main screen is like your desktop, and apps button has all the apps. Pretty intuitive.

It was a little bit sluggish with transitions. Guess they did not figure out how to accelerate this.

 

[tekker]

Pretty sure this isn't the Tegra 2's fault, this is more of a software limitation at the moment on Honeycomb.

 

[fizzwinkus]

i'm pretty sure the entire android ui isn't gpu accelerated.

 

[Piggie]

Remember you could buy a Tegra 2 based tablet last November 6 months ago.

Tegra 3 I believe is done, and Tegra 4 is on the drawing board.

I would hope will will see 2nd gen honeycomb tablets with Tegra 3 inside by the end of the year. Tegra 2 was a good starting point indeed, but I look forward to the next models as we all know, you learn when you are doing the 1st of anything, and the second one is usually the one where you can make all the changes

 

[ezekielrage_99]

LOL all 100 of them... vs the millions of us iPad owners! I would consider the xoom a flop.. at least until it drops its price

I had such high hopes for the Xoom, I thought it may have been not only a decent little product but some very healthy competition for the iPad. But I am going to have to agree with you on this one for the moment, the Xoom sadly is a pretty bad flop.

We got a dev one for work, the Xoom just felt very rushed, flaky UI and really like a prototype or beta... Not a pleasant experience.

 

[fizzwinkus]

Remember you could buy a Tegra 2 based tablet last November 6 months ago.

then it would be pretty silly of motorola to use it in a tablet released to compete with the iPad 2, wouldn't it.

 

[psonice]

I've been writing a lot of GPU heavy stuff for iPad 2 lately, and yes, it is a serious beast. I've done stuff in the last few days that would require a pretty powerful desktop!

There's one thing that makes it impossible to compare to desktop GPUs though (and this is both good and bad): the iPad has 'fixed' hardware.

When you write software for it, you know exactly what hardware you have to play with, and you can push it right to the absolute limit. On a desktop, much of the time you can only use perhaps 10% of the GPU power, because you know some people will run your app on an older computer with a low-end GPU (which is potentially iPad1 speed!) Comparing it to a console makes more sense.

The downside is that most apps are going to target iPad1. Worst case, you'll get an ipad1 quality app on your ipad2, if you're lucky you'll get ipad1 graphics with some extra features + quality for the ipad2 (I'd count real racing + infinity blade here - and I'd LOVE to see infinity blade made properly for ipad2!) Some apps will of course be ipad2 only, but I think they'll be rare for quite a while.

So what about android? They possibly have a small advantage here, because the android tablets appeared later. The base spec is going to be tegra 2 - which is faster than the ipad1, so devs can make better looking graphics without losing compatibility. Not that it'll matter all that much, until android tablets start selling a lot more and google fixes the issues with their store, a lot of serious developers aren't going to bother because iOS is where they know they can make money.