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iPad mini Quickest decision .... its going back

H

highlightshadow

macrumors regular
Original poster
Really disappointed in the iPad mini w/ retina

I know i should have known better, that the mild bump in clock speed of the A7 vs iPhone 5s wouldn't have been enough.

iPad mini cannot hold its own as a gaming device ... the screen i love, the device is beautiful but playing 3 games on it tonight has sealed the deal ... its going back ... frame rates are down, stuttering and lag

Not on for a £350 purchase
Maybe next year with A8
 
That's the best Apple has to offer right now. The A7 is a powerhouse, by the way, sorry software isn't perfect.
 
I mainly play things like racing games .... so RR3 is my benchmark for comparison and it just feels way off on the iPad

Its just too much to ask for the same silicon to push over double the pixel and expect performance i know .... i just hoped but to pay so much and always have that niggle
 
highlightshadow said:
Really disappointed in the iPad mini w/ retina

I know i should have known better, that the mild bump in clock speed of the A7 vs iPhone 5s wouldn't have been enough.

iPad mini cannot hold its own as a gaming device ... the screen i love, the device is beautiful but playing 3 games on it tonight has sealed the deal ... its going back ... frame rates are down, stuttering and lag

Not on for a £350 purchase
Maybe next year with A8
Click to expand...

How does the Air compare to the rMini?

I have a strong suspicion that the 100mHz does kinda make a difference when pushing that many pixels.

I'll see how my rMini holds up, but if it can't hold it's own, it's going back for an Air.
 
Dunno ... it *would* make a difference ... its not like its terrible but for someone who likes the smooth frame-rates and the feel of a game its enough for me to immediately question my purchase

And simply put i intended on keeping this iPad for at least 2 years (i had ipad2 presently) so to immediately feel its on the back foot with games that are now 6 months old ... i cannot help feel that in 8 to 12 months time it would feel significantly worse.
 
I remember seeing a video review this week of the retina mini and RR3 was one of the games...the reviewer said there was no lag and that it looked perfect?

I believe it was the verge video review?

Said no stuttering whatsoever.
 
Did you wait for your iCloud restore and photo restore to complete? Because as long as that's going on it's going to stutter. BTW, Even if your Wifi icon doesn't show the activity icon, it is still restoring in the background.
 
Um aren't iPads supposed to have much higher graphics performance over the equivilant chip in the iphone in order to offset the greater number of pixels it has to push? I believe this is no different with the A7. Someone pull up the Anandtech review and check.
 
The A7 is has a GPU that is twice as powerful as the A6X. So you are saying that games were laggy on the iPad 4th generation?
 
If ipad retina mini can't fulfill ur needs then going to another non apple device is ur best bet then... Cuz technically u only have the air and 5s to go to and those are exact same specs as the rMini. Well 1.4 for the air vs 1.3 rMini but .1 really?
 
@ slffl - This was setup as a brand new iPad with just a handful of 'test apps' installed ... nothing more so it was as 'best case' as i can imagine

@Dangerous Theory - Its not terrible by any means .... but i felt the frame rate was maybe 10% slower than on an iPhone 5s and the control wasn't as smooth ... felt like it wasn't taking the input the same

@syd430 - previous chips has the 'x' moniker to double the GPU cores ... the A7 is already a dual-core cpu / quad core GPU but again ... going from iPhone5s screen to iPad air/mini screen and only upping clock speed by 100 or 200mhz isn't enough

I think maybe RAM is an issue here too since the amount of texture memory needed for these 2 and 3GB games like RR3 / IB3 / GT2 etc ...

My simple point is that in all honesty i felt the game was a small step back in performance on the iPmr - albeit a small one ... but if the performance is already being maxed and then some out on top end games released several months ago (and therefore gone through about as much performance tuning as possible) ... how is it going to feel in 2 years .... i know how my iPad 2 feels today (still got one) and this was the driver for an upgrade ...

I guess i was being unrealistic and hoping (when i ordered it ) that the clock speed had been significantly bumped in order to offset the pixel count... now i know it hasn't been then i can completely understand what i'm asking of the iPad mini and i'm asking too much

For 99.5% users this is a brilliant device .... just not for me - still paying retina tax in CPU speed
 
I'm just about to swap my iPad 3 for the new Mini with retina. I don't game but do watch HD videos a lot, are there any problems with this?
 
snerkler said:
I'm just about to swap my iPad 3 for the new Mini with retina. I don't game but do watch HD videos a lot, are there any problems with this?
Click to expand...

Not at all .... the only thing i'm saying is that gaming that REALLY pushes current devices iPhone 5s as my reference are going to maybe slightly suffer on the iPad's ...

Its honestly amazing its as good as it is - genuinely its 'nearly' perfect ... in general the device is beautiful and it pains me to send it back ... i loved having it in my hands and using it .... but in my personal circumstances i need this next iPad purchase to last me for top-end gaming for a while ... thats where i feel it cannot and it wouldn't last *me*

Its 1 and only 1 aspect which is preventing me keeping it and for most other gamers they're probably going to say "what's he talking about" and i accept that ... i just love my frame rates and feeling of fluidity in driving games and it was immediately apparant to me it didn't have the same level as i'm used to with iPhone 5s

I bought it within seconds of it going on sale and it wasn't until we've now learned the CPU has only a minor speed bump to compensate for the double display and in my opinion it needed more
 
highlightshadow said:
Not at all .... the only thing i'm saying is that gaming that REALLY pushes current devices iPhone 5s as my reference are going to maybe slightly suffer on the iPad's ...

Its honestly amazing its as good as it is - genuinely its 'nearly' perfect ... in general the device is beautiful and it pains me to send it back ... i loved having it in my hands and using it .... but in my personal circumstances i need this next iPad purchase to last me for top-end gaming for a while ... thats where i feel it cannot and it wouldn't last *me*

Its 1 and only 1 aspect which is preventing me keeping it and for most other gamers they're probably going to say "what's he talking about" and i accept that ... i just love my frame rates and feeling of fluidity in driving games and it was immediately apparant to me it didn't have the same level as i'm used to with iPhone 5s

I bought it within seconds of it going on sale and it wasn't until we've now learned the CPU has only a minor speed bump to compensate for the double display and in my opinion it needed more
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply 🙂
 
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