Considering how well the SGX540/Hummingbird did compared to the Tegra 2 in GPU bound situations, it's not that surprising. Plus, you've got to imagine that things may be more optimized on Apple's software side of things since they've only got a single GPU to work with (and one that's an evolutionary advancement from the old one, at that). Check out some of the Tegra 2 compared to Hummingbird benches that Anandtech has done in the past.
Either way kudos to Apple for pushing the GPU side of things in the mobile space.
It's integrated into the A5 SoC, so it's not a "part". And using the best technology is pushing things, because it puts pressure across the competitive landscape to ... compete.
Uh, did you forget about the resolution difference?
This is like saying "wow! my graphics card runs 120FPS at 640x480 but yours runs it at 34 at 1440x900! My card is superior!"
It's not really better than tegra, the xoom is a horrible product and not at all optimized.
sheesh. Read carefully. Ipad 2 is an improvement, but there are already android phones that run the openGL ES 2.0 test at 45 FPS and that's smartphones, not ipads.
Keep in mind, the Tegra2 is sort of an old product. And yes, the resolution difference is about 25%. I'm kinda of wondering if there will indeed be a Tegra3 tablet this year. One thing the iPad2 doesn't do well yet is multitask between multiple web pages.
Tegra 2 hasn't been shipping in products for long only from the late second half of 2010. For high-volume products at least. For that matter it was a year ago they began to produce SNB. So you have to differentiate ready for manufacturing and volume shipping products here. Doesn't mean either of them are old. It wasn't because they thought it would be fun they waited until now to produce dual-core tegra-2 phones.
No joke! I'm no fan of the iPad, but the SGX543MP2 destroys Tegra 2. There's a reason Sony went with the SGX543MP4, they saw its potential behind closed doors and knew it would smoke any available Tegra within their timeframe. Yes, Nvidia will release a newer one, but Sony can't afford to delay the NGP just because of the Tegra 3. Heck by then an SGX 6xx might be out.
For those who don't know, the SGX543MP4 in the NGP has twice the cores of the SGX543MP2 tested here. Combine that with the other hardware of the NGP (faster processor, memory), slightly lower res screen (it's a 5" but its still supposedly 960 x 544 or something which is pretty high density), and big-budget titles should look really sick.
ipad2 still quicker taking into account number of pixels
More importantly - who cares about unimportant details like 3 fiddles vs 4 fiddles?
Computers are tools that perform tasks. What matters is the user's experience and the number of tasks they can perform.
The app store for me means that for this reason alone the iPad is only tablet worth getting. The fact that it's faster or slower than the Xoom (and it looks to be a lot faster) doesn't matter to me.
Agreed, at least in part. Due to resolution difference, the Xoom has 1.30 times the number of pixels if the iPad. Assuming two equal chips and perfect scaling, the Xoom's frame rates should be about 76.8% that of the iPad's frame rates. Clearly, there is a difference in optimizations and scaling isn't linear, but the differences here are large enough to indicate graphical superiority in Apple's hardware. (At least for these types of workloads) I'd expect Tegra 3 to reverse the situation. Considering how much faster nVidia updates than Apple, any advantage Apple gains will be relatively short lived.
On a side note, not all Cortex A9 designs are created equal. nVidia for instances has elected to roll their own design rather that use prepackaged arm cores. As such, they don't support NEON instructions in their Tegra 2 design. I wonder if any of their design choices have limited their performance in some of these applications.
On your side note, NEON is just an optional extra logic block - you don't need to use it and can save money by missing it out and still just use the off-the-shelf ARM synthesized A9 core design.
In fact, it's Apple who are the ones who are likely to have re-jigged the Cortex-A9 core here for extra performance; they bought the team from Intrinsity who did their own optimized version of the Cortex-A8 for the Apple A4 and the Samsung Hummingbird.
The performance increase is incredible, I can't wait to get this device in my hands to play with in the near future.. well worth the wait over then 1st Gen iPad...
Regardless if its 25% or 30%, the end result is still the same. the combination of SGX543MP2 (and to a lesser extent the OpenGL implementation of iOS) just slaughters Tegra 2 on Android...
It'll be interesting to see an SGX543MP2 in a Honeycomb+ device and compare it to the Xoom.
At first, I really though Nvidia would step in and slaughter IMGTEC (and they still might in the future), but its obvious IMGTEC is not going to go down easy and they have the brains to make it a real fight...
What's the point of taking real-world performance and converting it back to unrealistic benchmarks? The Xoom doesn't run at 1024x768, and the performance hit is Moto's sacrifice for more pixels.
Yeah, that will be a screamer. It probably won't scale perfectly, but thats roughly double the performance of the iPad 2's GPU, which in turn already trounces other mobile GPU's.
I wonder how the MP4 would compare to desktop chips, I wonder if they are getting into the territory of low end cards from a few years ago?
I think you misspelled "will scale poorly". The worst would be battery life if all 4 cores were actually doing work. Still, it would be interesting to see just how well or poorly it scales irl.
Imagination Technologies says that the GPU scales at an efficiency of 95% when you add more cores. That is likely the rate of fallof from theoretical 2x performance when you go from 1 to 2 cores and from 2 cores to 4 cores.
As impressive as the performance of modern low-power GPUs is, it helps to put things in perspective:
Tegra 2 - 4.8 GFLOPS (8, 1-way ALUs @ ~300MHz) PowerVR SGX543MP2 - 19.2 GFLOPS (8, 4-way ALUs @ ~300MHz??) Radeon 9700 Pro - 33.8 GFLOPS (8, 4-way ALUs (pixel) + 4, 5-way ALUs (vertex) @ 325MHz) Radeon 2400 Pro - 42 GFLOPS (8, 5-way ALUs @ 525 MHz) Radeon 5450 - 104 GFLOPS (16, 5-way ALUs @ 650MHz) Xenos (Xbox 360) - 240 GFLOPS (48, 5-way ALUs @ 500MHz) RSX (PS3) - 255.2 GFLOPS (24, 2 x 4-way ALUs (pixel) + 8, 5-way ALUs (vertex) @ 550MHz) Radeon 6970 - 2703.4 GFLOPS (384, 4-way ALUs @ 880MHz)
Granted, this only compares theoretical peak shader performance, and doesn't take into account the better ALU utilization of modern designs, but it should roughly correlate with general performance on modern workloads. Note that the iPad's GPU is just starting to approach Radeon 9700 (circa late-2002) levels of performance. It's impressive given the power-profile, but still nowhere near the performance of the 5-year-old consoles, and quite a bit lower than even a very low-end Radeon 2400 Pro from 2007.
The MP4 however, might come close to the Radeon 2400, depending on clocks. Once the next generation of consoles launch (hopefully next year, we'll see at E3) and game graphics likewise catch up to what modern high-end GPUs are capable of, the low-power GPUs will once again be put in their place for a number of years.
I'm almost positive I saw the XBox GPU scoring like twice the PS3 GPU somewhere..where did you get all these stats? I know the PS3 is capable of more graphics due to it's strange, but amazing CPU..but when comparing only GPU's the XBox's should be stronger.
"but when comparing only GPU's the XBox's should be stronger."
Yeah, it probably is. The 360 has a unified shader architecture, so it automatically splits up tasks depending on the workload. The PS3's GPU has fixed function pixel and vertex shaders, meaning all their power might not be used fully at any given point.
I tried to show how I derived all the figures, but perhaps you're questioning the "2 x 4-way ALUs" part that gives the RSX the edge in this comparison. Recall that RSX is based on G70, which had 24 "shader pipelines" and each pipeline had *two* 4-way FMADD units, for a total of 48. The caveat is that the instructions for both units have to come from the same instruction stream, a restriction not shared by Xenos or any other modern ALU organization.
So yeah, the RSX figure is the most optimistic of the bunch. Xenos no doubt sees much better utilization, due to not sharing the above restriction, having unified shaders, and having much better branch performance. In practice I'd say the Xbox 360's GPU has superior shader performance compared to RSX, but RSX does have a bit of a texturing advantage (24 vs 16 TMUs).
"Once the next generation of consoles launch (hopefully next year, we'll see at E3) and game graphics likewise catch up to what modern high-end GPUs are capable of, the low-power GPUs will once again be put in their place for a number of years."
Dream on!
ST Ericsson have announced their Nova A9600 mobile SoC using Imagination Technologies next gen PowerVR Series 6. Sampling later this year the GPU delivers in excess of 210 GFLOPS.
"The Nova A9600, built in 28nm, will deliver groundbreaking multimedia and graphics performance, featuring a dual-core ARM Cortex- A15-based processor running up to up to 2.5 GHz breaking the 20k DMIPS barrier, and a POWERVR Rogue GPU that delivers in excess of 210 GFLOPS. The graphics performance of the A9600 will exceed 350 million ‘real’ polygons per second and more than 5 gigapixels per second visible fill rate (which given POWERVR’s deferred rendering architecture results in more than 13 gigapixels per second effective fill rate). Thanks to Rogue Nova will support all existing APIs such as Microsoft DirectX. The Nova A9600 is sampling in 2011."
What's to dream on about? Game consoles being released no later than next year (which may be dreaming given the current climate) or low-power GPUs not being able to catch high-power GPUs?
First of all, 210 GFLOPS is still less than 1/10 of current GPU performance, and you can bet the next-gen consoles will have nothing less powerful than the current top-of-the-line. Again, I'm not dismissing Img. Tech's feat of cramming so much performance into such a small power-envelope, but does anyone realistically expect a sub-1W GPU to be able to take on GPUs that can consume 10s of watts built on the same process? You'll always be able to do more with more.
Lastly, "sampling in 2011" means we'll be lucky to see any shipping devices based on this even next year, especially ones with the "up to" specs mentioned in the PR.
Where did you get that info? I'll admit I based my initial knowledge of the SGX543 on what I gleaned from the informed discussion on the Beyond3D forums along with Wikipedia. Any publicly avaialable info from Imagination Technologies seems to only be available in press releases, which don't go into too much detail. I did find this, however, which officially disputes your 16 ALUs claim:
After further reading, it appears that SGX535 actually contains just 2, 32-bit-wide shaders (4-way int8, 2-way in16, and just one fp32 ALU per pipe), based on this (GMA 500 uses PowerVR SGX535): http://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/embedded...
The SGX543 doubles the number of shaders and improves on their capabilities (looks like 2-way fp32 ALUs based on "2x floating point" mentioned in the above PR), but I can't find any credible sources that explicitly discuss the exact changes. So it looks like my calculations may actually have been too high by a factor of two.
"We've got no less than four units running through battery life tests right now"
...You hardly ever do anything like this for other hardware.
And you already have two preview articles for this Apple junk in one day. Very obvious the favouritism here. You -even- seem to often spend more time taking better photo's of Apples products for your articles than you do with other products.
I'd ask if Apple was paying you or giving you free gear, like they have done with reviewers before, but i dont think Anand would atleast stoop that low.
Maybe because Apple products are so hyped and popular? It's a known fact that the iPad 2 will outsell the Xoom by a huge margin, and more people would like to know about it.
And clearly these benchamrks prove this isn't junk. It proves the Tegra 2 is junk.
No it didn't? Both have dual core Cortex A9s clocked at 1 GHz with 1MB L2 cache. And if it did beat the iPad, it was probably Apple's strict as hell throttling system causing it.
So, geekbench detects an iPad and spits out 1 ghz? According to Anandtech, it is clocked at 900 mhz as it is slower than a 1 ghz dual core Cortex A9 in pure cpu tests. Regardless of the clock speed, it performs like it is clocked at 900 mhz.
I saw the same thing on two different sites..but am entirely too tired to remember where. They were benchmarks..that seemed to be only CPU, and the Tegra 2 was doing quite well. One thing we all need to keep in mind is that Honeycomb is beta and still needs to be optimized with the hardware. For instance, the Xoom performs much better than the other tegra 2 wielding devices that have already been benchmarked..why? (Atrix)
Given that BOTH devices suffer the HUGE handicap of not running x86 code,
And that BOTH devices operate based on online software stores, even my mistrust in anything Apple must concede that not only the iPad2 is a good product at a fair price point, but it wipes the floor with the competition's @$$#$.
Isn't iPad marketshare in the last quarter something like 73%? In other words, the iPad is 4 times more popular than other tablets. In that context, devoting 4 times the attention to it is actually proportional.
The real questions is how popular tablets are though.
I've yet to see any evidence that actual people, as opposed to organisations, purchase tablets in any significant numbers.
Not that I'm denying that the iPad 2 is the best tablet out there, I'm just not seeing how market share in an insignificant market plays any real part.
"I've yet to see any evidence that actual people, as opposed to organisations, purchase tablets in any significant numbers."
Hey, we own a tablet... because my wife's work gave one to every employee as a Christmas gift.
Otherwise, we definitely would not.
Most often used for: eBooks Angry Birds
Not exactly pushing the envelope on technology... lol. Definitely wouldn't go buy one ourselves. It's a huge pain to use this thing on the web. easierr to use my wife's blackberry than to type on a touchscreen.
Compare it with other consumer electronics. In the first year the iPad sold more than the Nintendo Wii, and it took three years for the XBox 350 to hit 15 million sales.
It is a blockbuster product by any measure, and I think it is pretty safe to call it "popular" :)
The iPad sold more than the Wii in its first year? Hmm, I highly doubt that. I remember the Wii being sold out everywhere online and retail for at least its entire year if not longer.
The Wii sold something like ~85mil units in a little over 4yrs.
Yeah - go look it up on Wiki - iPad sold more units in its first 9 months than Wii. While they were both clearly wildly popular and to some extent supply limited, the Wii apparently sold about 10 million units in the first nine months while the ipad sold about 14 million. Not that it matters, the point is that the device is too popular for the only purchasers to be corporate. I would even bet that the corporate buyers were actually pretty late to the party as they usually are. Everybody I know (except me) bought their own ipad. Mine was a gift. I didn't want it but I couldn't talk her out of it - probably because she knew me better than I do.
Maybe you live in a small town or campus. The iPad is everywhere in NYC. 14 million sold last year is no small number. Analysts are predicting 25 million iPads this year. With the strong initial sales, there's no doubt Apple will achieve that number in less than a year.
Netbook is dead, I don't own any Netbook anymore. They are just subpar notebooks and not a replacement for a full notebook. iPad beats a netbook when it comes to web browsing and gaming.
I live in LA and only saw just 2 or 3 ipads. I don't hang out where they would typically be seen, ie Starbucks...
The netbook is not dead. They serve a purpose as intended. They are full, fledge PCs with standard ports ,REAL OSs using REAL applications. Not some toy cellphone OS.
My Atom/ION based, Ubuntu nettop HTPC can play 45Mbs M2TS streams the ipad/2 would choke on.
Your response seems like he classic Apple hater/denier that we see on here all the time, who might know a great deal about technical aspects of computing and what can be done on a device like a linux netbook, but have almost zero comprehension of what the general pubic actually want.
When will people here (and on DT) get it that a lot of people don't care about having "full fledged PCs..." and "...real OSs using real applications", whatever a "real" OS or application is?
They want something that is fun and easy to use, that gets the job done, that's it. The technicalities of how it gets done is not something that the vast majority care about.
People largely use MS OSes (windows) purely out of familiarity, and that they know about nothing else. Give people a go on these "unreal"(??) Oses and maybe you will be surprised at how easy people find the transition.
The only thing that I can really agree with you about is the standard ports issue, which bugs the hell out of me. That companies like Apple and SONY insist on their proprietary stuff is so irritating.
How is not being able to view over 40% of the internet that uses Flash & Java getting the job done?
Netbooks, my Apple fan boy friend, do NOT pose this problem.
The average consumer doesn't know the technical specs of their netbook OS, but they sure do appreciate being able to share files with their friends and family w/o having to hook up their netbook to a....what do you call it? Real OS?
The fact that ALL iOS devices have to be tethered to a "Real OS" to do any simple file management job sort of kills your whole argument of, "iPad it gets the job done" doesn't it?
What is this 40% of internets I cannot see? Should I care about it? I mean I see "The Shockwave / Flash plugin has crashed" CONSTANTLY on my PC using Chrome. Am I missing out on something? Because even tho I had a Flash Crash, the website is still miraculously available ...? Weird rite? Was it like authored to be usable without flash?
If I went there with my iPad would it say "go away iPad user" or will I just see a website and navigate around it?
What is the benefit to me of some Adobe crapware that has outlived its usefulness and now serves only as an attack vector for malware?
How does the iPad beat a netbook when it comes to browsing when it can't display over 40% of the websites that use Java and Flash?
As far as licensing media goes, netbooks can display all media a laptop can display.
iPad has restrictive media licensing policies. Try searching for a Vevo music video on the iPad. You will get ZERO results. Try the same search on a netbook on Youtube. See the difference? What koolaid are you drinking?
Real physical keyboard vs virtual keyboard, no need to explain this one. But if you really want to have a WPM typing contest on your precious iPad vs my netbook...then game on!
Lastly, I'd want to see some benchies between Intel Atom and the A5 before sheepishly saying that iPad trumps netbooks.
Jesus, the Apple fan boys have no capacity for independent thought do they?
For the average Joe, a tablet provides easier access to email, games and applications, and typically provides a much better web browsing experience. I don't see the point in a netbook, really - get a real notebook for real work, and use a tablet for leisure.
it’s Apple’s 3rd most profitable business segment and will likely be the 2nd most profitable sometime this year, only behind the iPhone. Apple make more profit than MS now and that is helped by additional iPad sales, not inspite of, like the loss leader “me to” products that come out each month claiming to be "<Apple product>-killers”.
On top of that the iPad is the fasting selling CE and Apple made this market segment viable despite other vendors having a couple decades to figure it out. Sure, it all makes sense and seems obvious now that it was explained to you assuming Apple did nothing special here. Where was Moto, Nokia and RiM’s tablets? Where was MS’ WinMo tablet OS?
So why again do you think that that this market isn’t popular or profitable?
"On top of that the iPad is the fasting selling CE" If CE = Consumer Electronic.... Kinect sold 10 million in 3 or 4 months. Quite a bit faster than iPad with 15 million in 9 months with about half in Q4.
It is sold to consumers and it does contain electronics, but it’s an accessory to a device so I don’t include that in any such listing. Do you include headphones and power adapters as CE? I surely don’t.
The "Guiness" in the "Guiness Book of World Records" is the beer company. Really.
I don't think their opinion on anything other than beer is authoritative, accurate, educated, informed, or relevant. These are the same people that keep track of biggest burritos and largest tumors. Quoting them on matters of consumer electronics is like quoting the National Enquirer on... anything.
And that is not including e-readers like the Amazon Kindle or Nook Color which I classify as a tablet. If you include that, Apple's market share dips to about 50% because of the 12 million e-readers sold in 2010.
And that's not including MP3 players, smartphones, netbooks, laptops, desktops, or supercomputers, which I classify as tablets too!
You're conflating two very different device categories to make the argument that a *mere* 50% market share for a single device isn't particularly significant? *slow claps* Quite the argument you make there. Quite the argument.
Tablet is not just a form factor. If that is your argument, then technically a magazine is the same "form factor", so then we must include all issued magazines.
A tablet is an experience, one you cannot get on an e-reader, a magazine, a smartphone, a notebook, a PC etc etc etc. It is a unique device with its own unique segment.
Tablets include devices like Ipad, Ipad2, Xoom, Touchpad etc etc.
You can install the Kindle app on Windows and Macs, too. I guess that makes them eReaders which you also classify as tablets, which makes the iPad marketshare under 5%. OMG APPLE IS TEH SUXS!!!1 :\
Umm, are we talking desktop computer Mac/Windows computers? Or are we talking notebook clamshells? tablet is a physical form factor. It has nothing to do with if it runs Kindle on Mac/Windows or not.
Yeah one product sells 3 times more than an entire group of products. So all the products in the 27% combined should get 1/3rd of the review time of the iPad.
Um, "4 times more popular" means 5 times as popular. Also, as ncb1010 said, 27% to 73% is much closer to a 1:3 ratio, so the iPad is roughly 2 times more popular than other tablets. In other words, you don't know what you're saying.
The multiple in 1:3 is 3, as in "3 times more popular." And 4 times more popular really does mean 4 times not 5. It is pretty simple math really. I thin what you meant was that 4 times more popular means 4 out of 5. As if it really matters. The actual multiple isn't as important as the fact that one single device is more popular than the entire remainder of the market put together, even if you try to pad the market numbers with single purpose devices that are clearly not meant to compete in that market (dedicated e-readers). The color Nook should probably be included though.
The Kindle runs apps and has an app store...so, I don't see how it is truly "dedicated". That device alone accounts for 7 million sales in 2010 which puts a big chink out of iPads 73% market share(calculated not counting Kindles) as it sold 15 million in 2010.
No, the iPad market share was over 90%. (Apple counts units actually sold to customers vs other manufacturers counting units sold to stores who may sell to customers later on so stats are approximate).
Consensus expectations are it will drop to 80% share this year and possibly drop from the #1 spot in 2014 or so.
However, this review makes me question such a large drop. Android software looks like it will not be competitive till summer, and the Xoom is faring poorly in the benchmarks. Maybe if someone else produces an Android standard bearer.
My head wants to tell me Apple is making the classic Mac vs PC mistake here by not being "open", but my gut is telling me things are just not the same in this space.
You "gut" is exactly correct. The world of tablets is not the same as the world of general purpose pcs. Just like the argument about tablets versus netbooks. Apples to oranges (pun unintentional). When people pick up a tablet, most of them do not expect or need the full complexity of a computer os. I have been using an iPad for several months now and I do not even notice that I am "missing" 40% of the internet. I suspect that number is still wildly inflated and falling fast. But the point is that I don't miss flash at all. The one thing I do miss is the lack of a file system. But most users don't.
What do you want? The iPad is >80% market share in a market Apple created. iPad 2 is kind of a big release.
Do you think Anand or elsewhere should ignore market share, history, and user interest when deciding amount of coverage? Does avoiding "favoritism" mean giving equal amounts of coverage to Intel and Via CPUs?
There are three different models that we're testing (AT&T, Verizon and WiFi) and we've got a second WiFi that we borrowed so we can speed up battery life testing. Apple doesn't actually sample us most of the time and all Apple review samples go back after ~30 days (and we never accept money for reviews so that's out of the discussion as well). Because we don't get sampled, we have to do a lot of parallel testing in order to still deliver timely reviews. Not to mention that given the baseband issues we've seen in the past with Apple and other recently released smartphones, we want to have as many datapoints as possible to make sure we discover any issues that may exist.
The PowerVR SGX 543MP2 is a particularly interesting GPU. It's something we'll see variants of in other SoCs going forward. We would've shown the same excitement and rush to test for any other platform that it debuted on.
As far as the pictures go. We have different folks do the photos for each article. Some products are easier to photograph in a way that looks cooler. I'd argue that the Atrix and Nexus S shots are just as good as what we've published here.
Do you know or could you tell us which other tablet that's coming up in 2011 would sport a variant of the SGX 543MP2(or 4)? Now that your test shows the GPU is actually substantially quicker than the Tegra2, I would want to wait for some other tablet that sports a larger resolution.
To date, I don't believe any have been announced. IIRC, TI is the only other SoC manufacturer with the 543MP in their roadmap and that won't be until the OMAP5 series next year.
But that doesn't necessarily mean no one will catch up to the iPad 2 in GPU performance. Many manufacturers (Samsung, ST) are using ARM's Mali core, which if scaled up could be competitive. nVidia has their next-generation Geforce ULP coming in Tegra 3 and Qualcomm has their Adreno 220 later this year, so there are plenty of players.
The iPad sold 15 million units in a year and the iPad 2 will likely double that. No other tablet will come anywhere close to that. It is obvious why Anand is covering that device.
It is also funny that you refer to the iPad 2 as "junk" when it is superior to the Xoom and every other tablet out there in terms of hardware, physical form factor, and application selection.
How is this a hard concept to grasp? It has nothing to do with Apple paying anyone anything. The fact of the matter is that the iPad has and the iPad2 will sell tens of millions of units, far more than all the android tablets put together so far.
It's a pretty simple business case:
1) $$$ = number of eyeballs looking at website articles (and hence advertising banners) 2) number of eyeballs = popularity of each article x number of articles 3) popularity of articles = popularity of article topic (product being previewed/reviewed) 4) iPad popularity > individual Android tablet popularity 5) iPad content popularity > other tablet content popularity 6) iPad content revenue > other tablet content revenue
Hmm, I'd say it's either favoritism or incompetence Anandtech? Which excuse are you going to choose? Why?
Well, here goes a few things I noticed off the bat.
I grabbed the GL benchmark app, and here a few indicators that it needs to be re-worked for the Xoom:
The Xoom has 27 native Open GL extensions (MOTODEV > Products > XOOM™ MZ600)
the GL Benchmark app only found 21 (GLBenchmark Result Details of Motorola Xoom)
So off the bat with the app not using all available OpenGL extensions for honeycomb or for the Nvidia platform I'd say that it's "off."
Secondly, the app even incorrectly reads the screen size at 1280 x 752.
So right now I say these needs to be updated before I got too crazy with the results.
I didn't do a cross reference of the utilized libs over the ones "left on the table" but if I get a few minutes I will. But, if these guys at Anandtech are supposed to be "pros" at this, why the glaring omission?
I would like to see Engadget...oops, I mean Anandtech, update this article to reflect this and redo these tests when the playing field is balanced.
Stop your trolling! I don't see any favoritism here and never has on any of Anantech's reviews, tell that to Engadget, Gizmodo and the like.
I did not expected anything less than this kind of detailed scrutiny on such an important device, plus due to the lack of true technically educated reviewers for Apple hardware Anandtech has become sort of the reference review site for this devices, a title that if I were Anand, will do what ever I can to keep.
Thanks for the quick test on graphics performance ahead of your iPad 2 full review.
I noticed that in the Egypt and Pro benchmarks, the frame rate with FSAA is actually the same or higher than without FSAA for the iPad 2. Could you comment on why that would be? I would guess that the SGX543MP2 without FSAA it's purely shader ALU limited, while with FSAA there is dedicated AA hardware so shader performance is not impacted and the A5 has lots of extra memory bandwidth or the SGX is very memory bandwidth efficient so that is not a limitation.
And for the Inifinity Blade comparison, would it be possible to post iPhone 4 shots as well? I believe the higher resolution textures, bump mapping, and specular shaders were already in place in the iPhone 4 version. AA did seem enabled in the iPhone 4, but perhaps only 2x since the iPad's AA looks higher/better.
Surpised how faster it is then the Tegra 2. Even if you factor in the resolution disparity, with the Xoom having about 25% more pixels, it still is really impressive.
You know what would be interesting? To see the exact same benchmarks on a PC GPU. How do these tablets perform against some real Nvidia or ATI hardware? Or even some Intel integrated GPU? And to take it even further, are they more capable than a handheld game console (PSP / DS)?
This is way more powerful than the PSP and 3DS (DS is so underpowered anything would beat it). I agree it'd be interesting to put it in perspective with current and past PC cards and with consoles (well, it'd beat the Wii, but I wonder how far it has to go to catch up to the PS3 and Xbox 360).
I believe that a year or two from now phones (and certainly tablets) would be able to drive 720p or even 1080p high quality games. Hook one to a TV, link a controller via bluetooth and you'd have a real console that would compete with current ones (with enough leftover CPU power to let you answer calls via a bluetooth headset while you're playing).
You say that the handheld should compete with the consoles in a year or two, but the consoles are also going to take a generation leap in the near future. We might see the next generation xbox and ps sometime next year - my fingers are crossed. From looking at the numbers, I would have to guess that the current xbox is already 6-8 times more powerful than the ipad2. Just a guess, but I would also bet that is overly conservative. The next leap in console graphics should be enormous by comparison since their expected life cycle could be 5 years or more. Once that happens, I don't think the ability to compete with the current (old) consoles would be very a big selling point for a device that costs more than the new console. Again. just a guess on prices, but I think Sony proved that consoles won't sell at $600.
The Android fan-boys have spent a good deal of smack-talk on the Tegra-2 processor. I assumed they knew what they were talking about, and the iPad 2 would be a bit anemic in the graphics department. This is a huge revelation - I hope more mainstream web sites pick up on this story.
If you didn't see this coming you probably don't have the best grasp of the subject matter. It has been very clear for a while that the PowerVR SGX543 would be better than the GeForce ULV GPU in Tegra2.
The CPUs are fairly close in performance, with Tegra 2 generally maintaining an edge in the synthetic benchmarks so far. Go read other reviews (including on this site) for that info, but the GPU performance of the A5 SoC is superior.
The "smack talk" was not wrong, your interpretation of it was. And until we get the full iPad2 review from Anandtech, it still remains to be seen which overall hardware/software package is better. Remember, the Xoom has Android 3.0 while iOS 4.3 is still pretty much inferior from a tablet perspective.
Sorry, I didn't fully understand the subtleties of low-voltage GPU specifications. I was under the impression that the Xoom and other Android tablets would have more competitive silicon - maybe the others will.
"Remember, the Xoom has Android 3.0 while iOS 4.3 is still pretty much inferior from a tablet perspective.”
Remember, that’s a load of crap. Apple designed iOS for iPad long before Honeycomb was even on Google’s radar. The fact is that iOS for iPad is much better designed for the tablet than any other mobile OS on the market. Android 3.0 as some nice features but it’s still playing performance catch up to an iPad OS that was demoed over a year ago.
"Honeycomb" was in development for tablets for several years. Long before the iPad. Having some tweaks,the iOS is really no different on the iPad than it is on the iPhone. It's the SAME OS!
Same OS as on Macs? Sure, they all use Darwin. Same CocoaTouch development platform for the main I/O? Sure, they are both iOS? Same OS that can be moved from device to the other with only a few tweaks as you suggest? Not even close. We’re talking an entirely new UI to accommodate the aspect ratio, size and pixel density differences.
So, Anand's Xoom/Honeycomb review is a "load of crap" huh? Maybe you should check it out:
"Simply put: the Xoom puts the iPad to shame. Particularly over WiFi the web browsing experience is just awesome. It’s like using a netbook, which in this case isn’t meant as a knock but rather a compliment.
It’s not all about performance though, functionally the Honeycomb Browser is a huge improvement over anything else out there: it supports tabbed browsing. I can’t stress how much better this makes browsing on a tablet. "
"Honeycomb feels a lot like Google’s take on iOS without sacrificing any of what makes Android unique. It’s a healthy combination of the appliance-like iOS without giving up any of the user facing customization & flexibility that Android users love."
"I’m impressed with what Google has done with the UI. It’s a definite modernization of what Android is all about. There are elements of the Android UI we’re used to within Honeycomb but they aren’t all that prevalent at the surface. This looks and feels like a brand new OS for Google."
"Am I more likely to use the Xoom than the iPad? Yes. The hardware is faster but more importantly, the software is better suited for multitasking. I’m a bigger fan of Honeycomb’s multitasking UI & notification system compared to the double-tap-home and passive notifications you get with the iPad and iOS. I can be more productive with the Xoom than I can be with the iPad as a result. I don’t believe Honeycomb’s UI is perfect by any means, it’s just more multitasking oriented than iOS is at this point."
Actually, as an iOS user who played with Honeycomb for the first time a week back, I have to say, iOS is showing its age. It was a great interface for its time but many advances (better notifications, widgets, stacks, homescreens, fast multitasking, consolidation of different social networking feeds, etc..) in other OS's UI's like WebOS, WP7 and now Android have pretty much surpassed it.
Time will tell if iOS will change to catch up to these features. Folders are godawful and awkward; that and program switching seem "tacked on" rather than an intuitive part of the OS. Then there's the lack of consolidated hubs, which makes checking facebook, then email, then thumblr kinda cumbersome.
No joke. This is pulled straight from Anand's review:
"Simply put: the Xoom puts the iPad to shame. Particularly over WiFi the web browsing experience is just awesome. It’s like using a netbook, which in this case isn’t meant as a knock but rather a compliment.
It’s not all about performance though, functionally the Honeycomb Browser is a huge improvement over anything else out there: it supports tabbed browsing. I can’t stress how much better this makes browsing on a tablet. "
"Honeycomb feels a lot like Google’s take on iOS without sacrificing any of what makes Android unique. It’s a healthy combination of the appliance-like iOS without giving up any of the user facing customization & flexibility that Android users love."
"I’m impressed with what Google has done with the UI. It’s a definite modernization of what Android is all about. There are elements of the Android UI we’re used to within Honeycomb but they aren’t all that prevalent at the surface. This looks and feels like a brand new OS for Google."
"Am I more likely to use the Xoom than the iPad? Yes. The hardware is faster but more importantly, the software is better suited for multitasking. I’m a bigger fan of Honeycomb’s multitasking UI & notification system compared to the double-tap-home and passive notifications you get with the iPad and iOS. I can be more productive with the Xoom than I can be with the iPad as a result. I don’t believe Honeycomb’s UI is perfect by any means, it’s just more multitasking oriented than iOS is at this point."
It looks like the only thing those screen shots are missing is anisotropic filtering as you can see how blurry the tiles get as the squeeze together. I wonder if the iPad 2 is capable of doing AA and AF together with decent numbers?
Apple's ipad2 has a more mature OS, just like when the first Android phone came out. So, even though they are "late" to the party, I believe Honeycomb to have the most features and by summer as they update it, it will be even or surpass apple in these benchmarks.
Heh, that's starting to sound like a running gag. "Android: 6-12 months down the line, it will be Much Better™."
Well, duh. Apple gets ahead every time they release a product, be it phone or tablet. None of the average consumers will ever care about Android if _right now_ it's not competitive and whatever Apple sells in their store is better than whatever Android vendors are selling.
Sure, yeah, 2-3 years down the road, Android devices will totally dominate the iPad 2. But something tells me that won't be what Apple will be selling at that point.
Like I said, Android will catch up and surpass apple. Apple is hindered by their closed system and marriage to itunes. I don't deny the ipad2 is a great device I just dont like any company forcing their policies on me.
I use the current android phone domination as an example.
Android will dominate sooner than that but that is not my reason for wanting the xoom. I believe the ipad to be more of a casual CE and the xoom(and devices that use android) more professional.
Not really sure why Android folks get their panties in a bunch over stuff like this. I'm an Android user, and I'm thrilled every time Apple raises the bar. Tegra 3 is due out in August (allegedly) and is supposed to be five times as powerful as Tegra 2. Tegra 2 had the advantage for a time, now it got crushed. If we actually see Tegra 3 by the end of the year, hopeful here but not holding my breath, then Android tablets will have the performance advantage for 3-6 months. We're also not going to get a super high resolution display until Apple does it, so again, be thankful when Apple pushes other hardware companies to kick it up a notch. One thing's for sure, these benchmarks seem to indicate the iPad 3 will be able to push all those pixels around, pretty impressive stuff.
Define super high resolution display? Android was leading the iPhone by a wide margin in pixel density until 8 months ago. Same thing is happening with tablets. 30% more pixels on the xoom in practically the same surface area.
Super high resolution = 2048 x 1536. Although I'd also accept 1920 x 1440 or 1920 x 1200. Yep, the Xoom has a higher resolution display, definitely a brilliant thing. I certainly wouldn't want to pay $500 for 1024 x 768, but 1280 x 800 is palatable. Personally I bought a Nook Color and a 32GB class 10 microsd card, for a total of $299. Sitting this gen out with a cheap alternative, power and resolution are going to see a serious bump in about a year.
Yes, a myriad of manufacturers do eventually offer higher resolutions on the Android platform, but typically as screen makers come out with new products. Apple literally has a spec in mind, and finds a supplier that wants to reap the benefits of hundreds of millions in sales from a single company. See the difference?
It's widely rumored and entirely likely that the next iPad will have a resolution of 2048 x 1536. Any another manufacturer can match this, but it'll cost them more than it'll cost Apple. I've said in the past, and I'll say it again, Apple's real advantage is that they know they'll order 10 million of whatever they are making. When you can buy in that volume, you can get a 2048 x 1536 screen made that nobody else has widely available yet for an extremely competitive price. Think about it, that represents hundreds of millions of dollars for a screen manufacturer... it gives them the ability to start a new product line without any risk at all, the only downside being that all of their capacity will be taken up by one customer for a significant period of time.
Again, no need to get touchy or defensive. There's simply no denying that Apple can purchase in greater volumes with less risk than pretty much anyone else... although maybe Microsoft will be a resolution winner in the near future, Nokia is a serious hardware powerhouse.
Apply the Apple Tax and it all evens out...lower component costs or not. A lot of these tablet manufacturers have their own display divisions and so the point about Apple being able to dictate what type of screens people make is really moot.
You’re referring to less than accurate sub-pixel counting on AMOLED displays. Not exactly a slam dunk.
So it’s been almost a year since the 326ppi iPhone 4 display was demoed. Where are the competing displays? Why doesn’t the iPhone 4 have a bad rap for rendering graphics with 4x the pixels of the original iPhone when the 23% higher pixel number is being stated as being the reason why the iPad 2 kicks its ass so thoroughly and why the iPad 1 is right on its ass?
Retina is nice, Super AMOLED is gorgeous.. and Super AMOLED Plus is cleaner, brighter, and lower power usage (Supposedly). I wish a tablet would have that for a screen. Samsung makes Apple's A5..why can't they put that screen on it?
Uhh...more than 512MB VRAM on a display like that? Never ever gonna happen..unless you're playing Crysis 2. To use over 512MB in most titles you need to hit 1680 x 1050 or even 1920 x 1080.
It really depends. In a lot of cases, you can trade processing power for ram usage or vice versa to attain the same effect. For instance, instead of having 1 model for something with the highest level of detail that gets rendered all the time, you would use 2, 3, 4 (or more models) that are of different qualities. The only limit to doing this is how much ram you have for vertex buffers and texture loading. As the object moves closer or farther away, the LOD system adjusts which is displayed as details you see at 1 meter is different than what you see at 1 inch or 100 meters. This saves triangle and texture processing but uses more RAM. It may take more man hours as well for modeling but there is commercial software out there to both reduce and tessellate models practically at will. Mip Mapping is the process of generating multiple textures automatically but they have to be all stored in memory. Again, this will save texel processing time.
Maybe I'm becoming too un-geeky for Anand. Maybe I need to get my info somewhere else. But The fact is:
I have plenty of questions regarding the iPad: - How do I really get content on and off it ? Automagically ? w/o iTunes ? - How can I get something akin to HP's Touch to Synch ? - Is the HP good enough to listen to music ? - Is it really worth it getting myself locked into iTunes ? - Would I have to re-encode my 400+ GB of FLAC-ripped CDs ?
I don't really care about the iPad's GPU performance. More about features, or, rather, ergonomics and workflow.
"How do I really get content on and off it ? Automagically ?" DropBox
"Is it really worth it getting myself locked into iTunes ?" As soon as iTunes starts delivering high rez music, yes. They are currently discussing this with Music companies. Meanwhile you are stuck with HDTracks and a few others or the bands themselves if you want high res music (poor selection of content). By high rez I mean > CD quality.
"Would I have to re-encode my 400+ GB of FLAC-ripped CDs ?" Yes. Your 400+GB of lossless music is way too big for your iDevice. So like the rest of us, during the sync process you will re-encode to some bogus but small mp3 compression.
Thats one part of it. Personally I deal with it by only syncing specific playlists.
The other part depends on your home ecosystem. This is a good starter article: http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/logitech_s... which if you follow all its links will drive you mad and make you buy a bunch of high end stereo gear. Good luck.
I'll be the first to reasonably answer your queries.
"-How do I really get content on and off it ? Automagically ? w/o iTunes ?"
There are a few basic, but annoying ways to get content on and off the device w/o your computer nearby. E-Books can be acquired through iBooks, Amazon, B&N with in-app purchases. You can get pictures from your camera with the purchase of an adapter to be able to plug in a SD card. There is also some way to wirelessly get pics from an eye-fi SD card right as you take the picture. Don't forget about screen capture either. Songs, Movies, Apps/Games..all through iTunes unfortunately, but can be done on the go at least. You can't expect the closed OS to be open.
"-How can I get something akin to HP's Touch to Synch ?"
Maybe in iOS 5..but I doubt it. Android is open so if demand is high enough..it will be, at minimum, some app. Blackberry seems to be working on something similar, but I cannot be sure yet.
"-Is the HP good enough to listen to music ?"
HP and Monster have been working together lately, and there is a chance their tablet will be capable of some nice audio. However..a device as large as a tablet vs a simple mp3 player for music? maybe if you aren't moving anywhere the whole time. I doubt it will equal Cowon quality on music, but I'm betting it will be at least a little superior to the iPad in this department.. if Dr. Dre has a say anyway.
"-Is it really worth it getting myself locked into iTunes ?"
Getting "locked" into anything is always counter-productive to future choice. You aren't truly locked in unless you count DRM and don't want to try to bypass it. No matter what platform you choose..your apps won't go to any other regardless. iTunes is loved by many, but also hated by many. The main complaint I hear about the iPods is having to use iTunes all the time. Many people I've talked to with iPhone 3G/S' never have installed iTunes on their comp..they just handle it all on their actual phone. Regardless of how large & slow iTunes may be..regardless of how messy it makes your music collection.. You always have the option to get your music/videos elsewhere and sending them through iTunes just the once.
"-Would I have to re-encode my 400+ GB of FLAC-ripped CDs ?"
Well..I hope you don't plan on trying to get 400+ GB on any tablet..cause even with an Android 64 GB + 128 GB SDXC memory card you only have 192 GB, minus your other content. That being said, you do Not have to re-encode..if you only put on a little at a time. There is a FLAC player App for iOS for $10 that works great.
as far as ergonomics go..I don't remember seeing anything about a tablet being made ergonomically, but they are getting easier to hold onto. I know the Eee Pads will have a material on the back that keeps them from slipping, and the iPad 2 is very light. The G-Slate almost looks ergonomic.
Since WebOS and the new RIM Tablet OS are both not on the market, and Honeycomb is a brand new baby OS..deciding which will have the best workflow is very difficult. RIM is always aimed at business..WebOS has always been positive in the past, but the guy who used to be in charge was hired on by Google to lead the Honeycomb team. Android is specifically designed to be full of features and have the best integration (i.e. taking a picture and with 2 seconds and 2 presses its on facebook), but it's basically still beta for now. iOS is designed with simplicity in mind. When it works fully it is nice and smooth for what it does, but is not really competing much in the extra feature category. It is, however, the only Tablet OS that can be considered Mature for now.
Of specs didn’t matter then there would never be a reason to upgrade an iDevice.
You’re misinterpreting what is actually states: specs alone aren’t revealing if you aren’t considering the SW that will run on the HW.
Without an efficient, well written OS, SDK and drivers you need to have more RAM, faster CPU and GPU just to accomplish the same tasks. These tests show that the Xoom barely beats a year old iPhone with one core Cortex-A8, and get trounced by the iPad 2.
"Everyone spread this article around the internet! We need to shut up all the Android fanboys for a while."
^ Really? Are you that insecure? You have to bash other people's viewpoints to bolster your own? What sad sad people you are. You are "taking sides" for a company versus another? Are you that stupid? These companies want your money. They aren't your friends, and they really don't care about you at all; you could jump off a bridge tomorrow, your entire family could be wiped out... so long as you bought their product, they really don't care.
And yet... here you are... supporting one company or another. Why? Does it give you some satisfaction in knowing the product you bought is slightly superior to another persons? Grow up, all of you, Android or iOS user alike (or any other [INSERT BRAND HERE] user).
The iPad 2 is a decent piece of hardware with nice ascetic quality. iOS is a giant pile of garbage in regards to being a tablet operating system. Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) is far superior, but lacks the number of apps and isn't totally polished in terms of bugs or performance. Generally speaking, I'd say the two are equal... Why must you idiots bicker over any other points?
In what ways is iOS a giant pile of garbage? Especially in regards to Honeycomb? To make such a rude and biased comment seems like an insecure reaction to me.
Seriously how is iOS garbage? It is more stable, more secure, more mature, etc., etc. Seriously, the iPad 2 is clearly better in almost all regards, both hardware and software. Why do you Android people so want Apple to fail? I mean your hate is so intense. You even admit the hardware is better, and you chastise the writer for making a big deal over a company, and yet your "garbage" comment is exactly the same thing. Every reviewer agrees, the iPad is superior to the Xoom and the software is superior to honeycomb. Just get over it. Apple's product.is better.
why would want such a device? You can't put it in your pocket and can't use it to do office work, its not a gaming device, its not for watching movies too small screen yet too big for anything else, so what is the point for this apart from throwing money away for browsing the web on a fat bulky and ugly looking tablet?
Actually it is quite light and elegant. I have had the first iPad for almost a year and it has proven itself to be very useful. I have a feeling that if the iPad 2 were exactly the same as it is but had any other brand on it than Apple, you would be all over it.
Apple-hater: Xoom is the greatest, iPad is junk.
Reviewers: iPad is clearly super AND costs less.
Apple-hater: how much is CrApple paying you! Xoom out-specs the iPad!
Reviewer: Benchmarks show the iPad is 4x faster than the Xoom. And costs less.
Apple-hater: yea but the iOS is garbage!
Reviewer: Honeycomb is buggy and feels rushed out before it was ready.
Apple-hater: Who would want a tablet anyway?!
Meanwhile Apple can't make the iPad fast enough to keep up with demand.
many people have been constantly arguing that a tablet such as this in general is useless since the original ipad. what exactly makes them "apple-haters"? many with these opinions own macbooks and iphones.
Some opinions are meaningful and some are not. When someone says that they do not have a use for a tablet, that is a valid opinion. When someone says that no one has a use for a tablet, that is an invalid opinion that wastes everyone's time. Slickr's comment was useless and meaningless and could possibly indicate he/she is simply out of touch with reality. Another possibility being expressed by Gherkin is that slickr is disappointed that Android and Xoom a not comparing well to current Apple products and is responding by saying tablets have no value anyway so Apple's current success with the iPad2 is meaningless.
I just don't see how he's a Xoom fanboy.. he's badmouthing tablets in general. Sure, he is a little aggressive about it..and commenting on an ipad post..but he doesn't mention any brands at all.
I know a number of people at my job who use the iPad to read books and they don't care about cameras or dual core. It doesn't improve human reading speed.
Yes, but it does so much more. Have you had your hands on an iPad 2. I have and it is truly impressive. It is so light and thin and everything is smooth, snappy, and slick. It really is an amazing technological achievement.
The pictures of increased graphics performance for iPad 2 optimized games do not do it justice. Dead Space looks and plays fantastic. Got mine yesterday and I have not missed my laptop one bit. I tried out the xoom and the only thing I was impressed with was Chrome on Honeycomb.
So, funny story. My wife took me to Nebraska Furniture Mart in KC for the first time and I must say that it is an amazing store!!! While there I naturally went straight for the electronics dept. and They actually have an Apple store built in!!! So, anyway, my wife was like, "Is the new Ipad here?!?", and I was like yup, but it's sold out. She said that she just wanted to see it. Keep in mind that my wife is rockin a POS sprint flip phone and is technologically r-tarded. So she messed with the ipad 2 for like 3 minutes and was like. "I don't see what all the hype is about." I just laughed at her and we wandered in the opposite direction. Low and behold we ran right into the XOOM. And I was like, oh sh*&!! This is supposed to be the ipad killer, so I let her mess with it first before I got my mitts on it. After about 2 min she was like "WTF?, This sucks!! Who would buy this if the other one is cheaper (ipad)." I said that only true geeks would understand. Then I played with the XOOM for about 5 minutes and I have to say, WTF!!! How is honeycomb even acceptable by anyone's standards at this point? Laggy as hell, and most of all, my wife, a true virgin to this market segment, would choose the ipad over the xoom. In my eyes, with first hand experience, I would choose the Ipad 2 without a heartbeat. Anyone that owns a xoom and brags about it is only trying to justify the cost of the device. Congratulations to everyone who waited to buy the ipad 2 as their first tablet. My wife ENVYS YOU!!!!!!!!!!
I'm in the market for a tablet or a ebook reader. I like the instant-on feature and the fact that I can use it around the house and in bed So I was looking at the ipad, ipad2 and xoom. If i didn't read any reviews or researched on the web. Simply based my purchase on how useful the product is from actual usage. Hands down the Apple's Ipad 2 will be the winner. Even the Ipad 1st generation felt much more polish than the Xoom. What idiot would purchase something like the xoom? Even the geeky side of me can not justify buying it at this point. People are in lalaland when they simply look at paper specifications. Give me real world specs please. Forget about the open/close OS and Itune sucks donkey nuts. Honestly, the Xoom felt like a half ass rushed out product so the consumer can be the beta tester...sorry no thanks.
One Ipad 2 please.....until something better comes along.
For years I have been pleading for someone to take note of PowerVR.
Shame its been relegated to the iPad but I hope this enables a few folks to wake up and realise that there is a good alternative to brute force rendering.
I have been a fan of the PowerVR tech since the Matrox M3D days from the mid-90s.
Please can we reintroduce this tech into the next generation of PC graphics cards so we can start to reduce power consumption and up efficiency.
The current road we are on for PC graphics isnt the right one. With PowerVR we could maybe get a 6990 capable card with the power consumption of a 5770.
It is a Super Cool Device that I don't need, honestly. Thats not to say I am not tempted, I wouldn't mind if someone if gifted it to me. Too bad none of my family members are reading this.
As far as the Xoom, I will buy one when The xoom is 399 or less. -Tempting options for the Xoom is native HDMI out although my netbook with HDMI out on integreted intel graphics would hang up alot with trying to stream hd content to my TV so our family could watch hulu content. -love the honeycomb idea although my android 2.2 device is a bit unpolished
Overall, there is some healthy competition. WHo will be the winners. Would love to invest my money so I can easily afford the devices. Broadcom, apple, or nvda? I have a feeling nvda will lose some of the coolness that it wrapped itself with in the last 2-3 months with tegra2.
Its pointless having all that graphics power anyway.
To play games u need BUTTONS - and preferably also a joystick.
I have a psp anyday. I have yet to see a single decent game on a phone (any phone, ever). I bought Asphalt 5 on Android just to check out a latest game, and its rubbish. in comparison to dedicated portables.
Remember Apple's Ipad has to be competitve for the next 12 months. The next revision of Droids will push the bar higher. Should be thankful for the battle between Droiddom and Apple for pushing tech ever higher.
I agree..I've tried lots of games and touchscreen buttons are a pain to use for this department. FPS is probably the worst. I do kind of like the idea of that PSP phone coming out tho.. should be interesting.
Are you honestly saying that a drastic improvement in performance is meaningless because developers haven't yet had the chance to write apps that take advantage of it?
The comments in this section are a big joke. You've all been owned by corporate marketing strategy and product placement.
How about... people buy whatever the hell they want to buy, and you don't comment on their purchase versus your own. That's a novel concept... shutting your mouths and letting others be content with their purchases.
You Apple folk, take your iPad praises elsewhere, you won't convince Android users that your device is better...
In addition, you Android folk, take your iPad bashing elsewhere, you won't convince iOS users that anything aside from an Apple device is better.
Now can the rest of you shut the hell up about the devices? This thread is about the GPU in the SoC, not the device.
So, it's still a much much lower score... and this is optimistic since I'm taking the best benchmark for the xoom... but all of the other benchmarks just worsen it.
Also, take as example how AA on the iPad results much better than no AA on the xoom at all, even when the iPad must render a bigger picture of the scene to fit it on the display later.
As others have commented, the XOOM renders at 1280 x 752, since the Honeycomb menu bar is always on the screen, so the best case benchmark for XOOM is slightly lower:
Android 3.0 ("Honeycomb") applications cannot completely hide the System Bar since it contains the Home/Back/Task Switch buttons which are crucial for using the device. Apps can only enable a "lights out" mode which will dim the System Bar until you touch it, but they can never use the entire screen.
Thanks for a great review. Looking at the POWERVR SGX543MP specs I see it supports various modes of GP-GPU including OpenCL. I wonder if Apple are (or will be) exploiting this in the iOS as they seem to be is snow leopard?
They don't actually use OpenCL in Snow Leopard, OpenCL is available for use by developers within Snow Leopard. The two things are distinctly different. I imagine its the same for this.
I was never sold on Tegra 2 for battery life alone based on some stuff I read last year. The PowerVR looks like it doesnt wanna be left out of the specs talks. Which is good, cuz it proved last year to be one of the best gpu's in mobile devices along with Tegra 2.
Like I said I was leery on Tegra 2 just on battery life.....and based on this article.....I will definitely wait til some other phones with different chips come out.
Trying to convince the other side that they're wrong when it comes to iOS vs Android debates is like trying to convert someone's religion or political affiliation. Plus, let's never forget this graphic:
It doesn't make sense that there would be such a difference - isn't it more likely the benchmarking program doesn't use both cores when its doing whatever it is doing.
I think you may have something there...this doesn't m ake any sense that the xoom would be so low. Nvidia has been known for graphics, especially open gl. Something tells me that some updates are in order and if this is true and this is the best gaming that the xoom can do then don't buy one if you plan on gaming on it. I for the life of me hate every touchscreen game that I've ever played.
Beyond H.264 that is accelerated in HW, i am curious to know if anyone has made any benchmarks for other codecs on iPad2 such as VC-1 (Microsoft camp, that will not deliver a tablet any time soon) or WebM (Google camp thta does not seem very strong on Video...). especially with the powervr sgx543mp2 core to accelerate some of the video primitives.
I think you're vastly overestimating the role of the GPU in codec work. Almost all mobile SoC's have either dedicated fixed-logic for such things or power-efficient DSP's. Very little of the work is actually done on the GPU.
I see alot of this refers to Tegra comparions. This is incorrect. The Xoom is one deice that is currently un-optimised for a set of benchmarking tools. Check out other Tegra devices - even the £250 Advent Vega - It scores about the same, and in some cases MORE than the iPAD 2. So Tegra and the New A5 chip are about the same.
Maybe Anand shoould run a retaction about Tegra comparisons, or test the iPAD up against a device that is half the price!
good job apple for making the tablet space competitive i hope prices will go down faster than expected.
NVIDIA is a graphics company, im pretty sure it can catch up on this performance gap. Android 3.0 is a version 0 release, optimizations can come just like it did on version 2, by that it can minimize the gap on performance. the Xoom is a great tablet, it just need to be priced reasonable to compete here as it no longer deserves the premium its asking for, ipad 2 is better in many ways.
. . . here in Atlanta I'm seeing iPads everywhere. Parents using them while at their kids' soccer games, at the dojo where I've seen a number of parents and practitioners using them, at the Atlanta airport there were at every gate and in Albuquerque's airport when I flew into there and yes, at Starbucks and other, less well-known coffee shops around town.
They don't sell 14 million iPads and "no-one has them". The smell of "I hate Apple" fanboies is getting ripe on this list . . . . I don't have one yet, but I will be buying an iPad2. I have three kids in school and one in college, the device is just too darned useful in an educational setting to ignore. And that's where some crazy growth is going to come, in education.
So all you anti-Apple whiners, it must suck being you these days, eh? ; - )
14 million is remarkably small, actually, compared to just the total tablet PC market. The reason most of us don't see them very often is most of us aren't regularly in light use markets. I spend a lot of time in office environments and manufacturing floors, not children's soccer fields. There isn't a single iPad in these places because they don't do any good there. We do have tablet PCs though, because we can actually put programs on them that do what we need, something Apple is grossly deficient in.
Any plans for video playback tests? At minimum avi and mkv containers, divx/xvid and h264 codecs. For h264 720p and 1080p at main and high profile, seeing as how the Tegra 2 "no high profile"-debacle needs some closure.
Lots of valid points, but as usual, the main points are missed by techies who have a "god complex" about their knowledge of the computer industry and hardware.
Android is, at best, good for techies. It's not refined for the general population, many of whom *still* don't have a grasp on technology as a whole. Don't believe me? Go do help desk for a month and come back. Sticking with my accusation of "god complex," the techie will push Android on their relatives so they can look like the savior when things go wrong. This is not to say that there aren't problems that arise on the iOS from time to time, but already, malware is making the rounds on Android. It's ok. "God person" will come to the rescue.
For all the techies who ripped Apple for not originally coming with a 2-button mouse, I'll show you people who: * didn't know the right button did something different * didn't know they had to use the left button to select something from the context menu * didn't know if double-clicking meant "left double-clicking" or "right double-clicking" . . . etc. This was in 2010.
The iPad (2) offers a simple experience for the regular person and offers far more to the TRUE hackers who know how to unlock the device and make it do what they want anyway.
Bash away, but from what I can tell, techies have no *valid* argument against my post...
I'm not a techie, I'm a business person, and the iPad2 is still lightyears away from anything worth getting. The system is so hobbled that I can't do anything with it that Apple doesn't deign give me permission to do, first. I can't tie it into any of my business systems. It's useless for me. It's an expensive and underfunctional Netbook.
If I was only in the market for checking e-mails, playing games, and engaging in limited web browing, the iPad2 would be just fine. But I actually want it to do more than that. How fast the processor is at rendering 3D games is meaningless to me. I have a home PC and a travel laptop that does far more in that department. What good is all that power if it doesn't do what I want it to do? The iPad2 is a Maserati in a school zone. It looks nice, but it's all wasted effort.
Android isn't just a techie system, it's positioning itself to take on the business world, where the major profits are. Until Apple can do that, which includes not locking the system down and funneling everything through their store, they will remain an overall bit player that strangely get a lot of media attention relative to their size and market presence.
I would argue that the major profits in personal computing hardware are actually in the consumer space. Deutsche Bank published a study claiming that Apple commands 35% of the total PC market operating profits on just 7% of total revenues, and I'm pretty sure consumers make up the bulk of Apple's sales. I don't see why the tablet space would be any different.
LOL, this makes me laugh. First since this is a business use, signup for the iOS Developer Enterprise Program, second code up and deploy WHATEVER YOU WANT TO INTERNALLY. Now if you only care about your own needs a single regular iOS Developer Program subscription will do fine and allow you to install any app you've written to tie into your business systems as needed. Oh and the apps don't have to go through the App Store (since its internal and you wouldn't be selling them anyways), been like this since app development started.
Next solution, do your business systems not have a html interface? Any kind of easy to tie into API? I mean seriously, you could create a webapp for internal use and then use whatever tablet/netbook/etc... you wanted.
ipad2 is awesome, double the speed, nice! but too expensive, right? well there is a way to get 400 dollars a week for 20 dollars a month, yes. check is out 400aweek.com Join 180,000+ members. this is revolutionary!
I understand that there is a difference in performance due the resolution of the screen, so pulled up G-tablet specs (screen resolution slightly lower than ipad2) on GLbenchmark http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=g...
looks like the cheap tab matches and in some cases outperforms the ipad2. It it true or am I interpreting it all wrong.
ok this is like comparing ferrarie enzo to a mitsubishi lancer evo or like comparing a sport atv to a sport utility atv,.... sure look at the ferrari .. itll kill the lancer in a race but overall mitsubishi is better. better for overall situations, you dont see someone driving an enzo on rough roads.... its been built for a specific use....
sport quad = built for speed cant go everywhere with it. Sure its fun but you dont have versatily of a sport utlity.. sport utility you can do everything a sport quad can and more!
where am i going with this? the ferrari enzo and the sport quad are just like the ipads.... they do good in one field.... Xoom is good at everything. The reason apple rates so high... it has nothing with high cpu to run, no bonus features or anything. Comparing Apple os to honeycomb phones are jokes!
The Honeycomb might rate lower but it is much better than Apple, much more versatile!( sport utility / lancer evo)
its not all about triangles and fill rates, nvidias background is with desktop gfx cards. anti alaising, shadows etc and extra fx i suspect the powervr would struggle with stuff like that (cpu work) lets compare some tegra 2 optimised stuff with the powervr cpu/gpu working overtime. from what ive seen the ipad2 runs well but the tegra 2 games have more of a destop feel.
im glad powervr are doing it again but ive got a sneaky feeling that the tegra 2 been based on a desktop gpu rather than just a polygon shifter has a few tricks up its sleeve and it seems they might be the SoC of choice for android (which is a shame cos samsungs exynos beats the a5 in polygon shifting). Demo's of the tegra3 are going around and it look impressive with dynamic lighting and stuff.
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rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
I expected nothing less. I knew the SGX543MP2 could beat a Tegra, but never expected a margin like this.tipoo - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
My thoughts exactly. I was excited for Tegra 2 devices, but this MP2 beats it handily.vol7ron - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
I'm more impressed by the For Loop test. I think that's the biggest testament to the memory/processing improvements.Ringer9 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
"I expected nothing less.... but never expected a margin like this." Are you a politician?Griswold - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
He sure sounds like one.nafhan - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Considering how well the SGX540/Hummingbird did compared to the Tegra 2 in GPU bound situations, it's not that surprising. Plus, you've got to imagine that things may be more optimized on Apple's software side of things since they've only got a single GPU to work with (and one that's an evolutionary advancement from the old one, at that). Check out some of the Tegra 2 compared to Hummingbird benches that Anandtech has done in the past.Either way kudos to Apple for pushing the GPU side of things in the mobile space.
Ushio01 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
"Either way kudos to Apple for pushing the GPU side of things in the mobile space."So using an off the shelf part is pushing things now?
Griswold - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Apple invents, revolutionizes and amazes everything and -one.Focher - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
It's integrated into the A5 SoC, so it's not a "part". And using the best technology is pushing things, because it puts pressure across the competitive landscape to ... compete.designerfx - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Uh, did you forget about the resolution difference?This is like saying "wow! my graphics card runs 120FPS at 640x480 but yours runs it at 34 at 1440x900! My card is superior!"
It's not really better than tegra, the xoom is a horrible product and not at all optimized.
sheesh. Read carefully. Ipad 2 is an improvement, but there are already android phones that run the openGL ES 2.0 test at 45 FPS and that's smartphones, not ipads.
rish95 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
iPad 1024 x 768 is 250% higher than smartphone 800 x 480. Xoom is only 30% higher resolution than iPad.AmdInside - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Keep in mind, the Tegra2 is sort of an old product. And yes, the resolution difference is about 25%. I'm kinda of wondering if there will indeed be a Tegra3 tablet this year. One thing the iPad2 doesn't do well yet is multitask between multiple web pages.djgandy - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
How is it old? It's been on the market for a month.Some people think Nvidia are the only company who can make graphics chips.
pinisgrande - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Dude, get your facts straight before you open your mouth.Nvidias tegra 2 is over a year old...
http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1262837617533.html
It's just the manufacturers who didn't realize it's full potential util A MONTH ago.
Sry for my bad name but i regged just to post this comment
rish95 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
But both the Tegra 2 and SGX543 were announced in 2009.Penti - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
So was Cortex A9.Tegra 2 hasn't been shipping in products for long only from the late second half of 2010. For high-volume products at least. For that matter it was a year ago they began to produce SNB. So you have to differentiate ready for manufacturing and volume shipping products here. Doesn't mean either of them are old. It wasn't because they thought it would be fun they waited until now to produce dual-core tegra-2 phones.
djgandy - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Its much better than Tegra. I'm sorry that Nvidia getting beat causes you so much heartache.Alexvrb - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
No joke! I'm no fan of the iPad, but the SGX543MP2 destroys Tegra 2. There's a reason Sony went with the SGX543MP4, they saw its potential behind closed doors and knew it would smoke any available Tegra within their timeframe. Yes, Nvidia will release a newer one, but Sony can't afford to delay the NGP just because of the Tegra 3. Heck by then an SGX 6xx might be out.For those who don't know, the SGX543MP4 in the NGP has twice the cores of the SGX543MP2 tested here. Combine that with the other hardware of the NGP (faster processor, memory), slightly lower res screen (it's a 5" but its still supposedly 960 x 544 or something which is pretty high density), and big-budget titles should look really sick.
Raoush - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
ipad2 still quicker taking into account number of pixelsMore importantly - who cares about unimportant details like 3 fiddles vs 4 fiddles?
Computers are tools that perform tasks. What matters is the user's experience and the number of tasks they can perform.
The app store for me means that for this reason alone the iPad is only tablet worth getting. The fact that it's faster or slower than the Xoom (and it looks to be a lot faster) doesn't matter to me.
JPForums - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Agreed, at least in part.Due to resolution difference, the Xoom has 1.30 times the number of pixels if the iPad.
Assuming two equal chips and perfect scaling, the Xoom's frame rates should be about 76.8% that of the iPad's frame rates.
Clearly, there is a difference in optimizations and scaling isn't linear, but the differences here are large enough to indicate graphical superiority in Apple's hardware. (At least for these types of workloads)
I'd expect Tegra 3 to reverse the situation.
Considering how much faster nVidia updates than Apple, any advantage Apple gains will be relatively short lived.
On a side note, not all Cortex A9 designs are created equal.
nVidia for instances has elected to roll their own design rather that use prepackaged arm cores.
As such, they don't support NEON instructions in their Tegra 2 design.
I wonder if any of their design choices have limited their performance in some of these applications.
adntaylor - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
On your side note, NEON is just an optional extra logic block - you don't need to use it and can save money by missing it out and still just use the off-the-shelf ARM synthesized A9 core design.In fact, it's Apple who are the ones who are likely to have re-jigged the Cortex-A9 core here for extra performance; they bought the team from Intrinsity who did their own optimized version of the Cortex-A8 for the Apple A4 and the Samsung Hummingbird.
coldpower27 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
The performance increase is incredible, I can't wait to get this device in my hands to play with in the near future.. well worth the wait over then 1st Gen iPad...mitodna - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
It would be great if can have an adjusted Xoom value running on 1024 * 768?.However iPad 2 is simply amazing at amazing price.rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Just increase the Xoom's score by 25% each time. iPad 2 still has huge margin.ncb1010 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Well, the xoom actually has more like 30% more pixels to deal with.winterspan - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Regardless if its 25% or 30%, the end result is still the same. the combination of SGX543MP2 (and to a lesser extent the OpenGL implementation of iOS) just slaughters Tegra 2 on Android...It'll be interesting to see an SGX543MP2 in a Honeycomb+ device and compare it to the Xoom.
At first, I really though Nvidia would step in and slaughter IMGTEC (and they still might in the future), but its obvious IMGTEC is not going to go down easy and they have the brains to make it a real fight...
nafhan - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
This also makes it pretty clear why Nvidia is already talking up their "Kalel" devices!Ringer9 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
What's the point of taking real-world performance and converting it back to unrealistic benchmarks? The Xoom doesn't run at 1024x768, and the performance hit is Moto's sacrifice for more pixels.rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
If the SGX543MP2 can do so well...it makes me wonder what the NGP's SGX543MP4 can do.tipoo - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Yeah, that will be a screamer. It probably won't scale perfectly, but thats roughly double the performance of the iPad 2's GPU, which in turn already trounces other mobile GPU's.I wonder how the MP4 would compare to desktop chips, I wonder if they are getting into the territory of low end cards from a few years ago?
Azethoth - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
I think you misspelled "will scale poorly". The worst would be battery life if all 4 cores were actually doing work. Still, it would be interesting to see just how well or poorly it scales irl.tipoo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Why would it scale poorly? The 543 is built to be modular, its supposed to scale better than any other GPU solution.ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Imagination Technologies says that the GPU scales at an efficiency of 95% when you add more cores. That is likely the rate of fallof from theoretical 2x performance when you go from 1 to 2 cores and from 2 cores to 4 cores.jalexoid - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Ahem.... Actually GPUs scale almost linearly.somata - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
As impressive as the performance of modern low-power GPUs is, it helps to put things in perspective:Tegra 2 - 4.8 GFLOPS (8, 1-way ALUs @ ~300MHz)
PowerVR SGX543MP2 - 19.2 GFLOPS (8, 4-way ALUs @ ~300MHz??)
Radeon 9700 Pro - 33.8 GFLOPS (8, 4-way ALUs (pixel) + 4, 5-way ALUs (vertex) @ 325MHz)
Radeon 2400 Pro - 42 GFLOPS (8, 5-way ALUs @ 525 MHz)
Radeon 5450 - 104 GFLOPS (16, 5-way ALUs @ 650MHz)
Xenos (Xbox 360) - 240 GFLOPS (48, 5-way ALUs @ 500MHz)
RSX (PS3) - 255.2 GFLOPS (24, 2 x 4-way ALUs (pixel) + 8, 5-way ALUs (vertex) @ 550MHz)
Radeon 6970 - 2703.4 GFLOPS (384, 4-way ALUs @ 880MHz)
Granted, this only compares theoretical peak shader performance, and doesn't take into account the better ALU utilization of modern designs, but it should roughly correlate with general performance on modern workloads. Note that the iPad's GPU is just starting to approach Radeon 9700 (circa late-2002) levels of performance. It's impressive given the power-profile, but still nowhere near the performance of the 5-year-old consoles, and quite a bit lower than even a very low-end Radeon 2400 Pro from 2007.
The MP4 however, might come close to the Radeon 2400, depending on clocks. Once the next generation of consoles launch (hopefully next year, we'll see at E3) and game graphics likewise catch up to what modern high-end GPUs are capable of, the low-power GPUs will once again be put in their place for a number of years.
Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I'm almost positive I saw the XBox GPU scoring like twice the PS3 GPU somewhere..where did you get all these stats? I know the PS3 is capable of more graphics due to it's strange, but amazing CPU..but when comparing only GPU's the XBox's should be stronger.tipoo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
"but when comparing only GPU's the XBox's should be stronger."Yeah, it probably is. The 360 has a unified shader architecture, so it automatically splits up tasks depending on the workload. The PS3's GPU has fixed function pixel and vertex shaders, meaning all their power might not be used fully at any given point.
somata - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I tried to show how I derived all the figures, but perhaps you're questioning the "2 x 4-way ALUs" part that gives the RSX the edge in this comparison. Recall that RSX is based on G70, which had 24 "shader pipelines" and each pipeline had *two* 4-way FMADD units, for a total of 48. The caveat is that the instructions for both units have to come from the same instruction stream, a restriction not shared by Xenos or any other modern ALU organization.So yeah, the RSX figure is the most optimistic of the bunch. Xenos no doubt sees much better utilization, due to not sharing the above restriction, having unified shaders, and having much better branch performance. In practice I'd say the Xbox 360's GPU has superior shader performance compared to RSX, but RSX does have a bit of a texturing advantage (24 vs 16 TMUs).
coredump27 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
"Once the next generation of consoles launch (hopefully next year, we'll see at E3) and game graphics likewise catch up to what modern high-end GPUs are capable of, the low-power GPUs will once again be put in their place for a number of years."Dream on!
ST Ericsson have announced their Nova A9600 mobile SoC using Imagination Technologies next gen PowerVR Series 6. Sampling later this year the GPU delivers in excess of 210 GFLOPS.
Source - http://www.stericsson.com/press_releases/NovaThor....
"The Nova A9600, built in 28nm, will deliver groundbreaking multimedia and graphics performance, featuring a dual-core ARM Cortex- A15-based processor running up to up to 2.5 GHz breaking the 20k DMIPS barrier, and a POWERVR Rogue GPU that delivers in excess of 210 GFLOPS. The graphics performance of the A9600 will exceed 350 million ‘real’ polygons per second and more than 5 gigapixels per second visible fill rate (which given POWERVR’s deferred rendering architecture results in more than 13 gigapixels per second effective fill rate). Thanks to Rogue Nova will support all existing APIs such as Microsoft DirectX. The Nova A9600 is sampling in 2011."
somata - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
What's to dream on about? Game consoles being released no later than next year (which may be dreaming given the current climate) or low-power GPUs not being able to catch high-power GPUs?First of all, 210 GFLOPS is still less than 1/10 of current GPU performance, and you can bet the next-gen consoles will have nothing less powerful than the current top-of-the-line. Again, I'm not dismissing Img. Tech's feat of cramming so much performance into such a small power-envelope, but does anyone realistically expect a sub-1W GPU to be able to take on GPUs that can consume 10s of watts built on the same process? You'll always be able to do more with more.
Lastly, "sampling in 2011" means we'll be lucky to see any shipping devices based on this even next year, especially ones with the "up to" specs mentioned in the PR.
rish95 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
This is wrong. The SGX543MP2 has 16 4-way ALUs. A single SGX 543 has 8 4-way ALUs. So make that 38.4 GFLOPS.somata - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Where did you get that info? I'll admit I based my initial knowledge of the SGX543 on what I gleaned from the informed discussion on the Beyond3D forums along with Wikipedia. Any publicly avaialable info from Imagination Technologies seems to only be available in press releases, which don't go into too much detail. I did find this, however, which officially disputes your 16 ALUs claim:http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?NewsI...
"[...]Taking the already high-performance four-pipe POWERVR SGX543, and then scaling that performance up to between eight and 64 pipelines[...]"
After further reading, it appears that SGX535 actually contains just 2, 32-bit-wide shaders (4-way int8, 2-way in16, and just one fp32 ALU per pipe), based on this (GMA 500 uses PowerVR SGX535):
http://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/embedded...
The SGX543 doubles the number of shaders and improves on their capabilities (looks like 2-way fp32 ALUs based on "2x floating point" mentioned in the above PR), but I can't find any credible sources that explicitly discuss the exact changes. So it looks like my calculations may actually have been too high by a factor of two.
Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
isn't that the GPU in the next PSP?tipoo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
NGP = the next PSP, and yes, it will use the MP4B3an - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
"We've got no less than four units running through battery life tests right now"...You hardly ever do anything like this for other hardware.
And you already have two preview articles for this Apple junk in one day. Very obvious the favouritism here. You -even- seem to often spend more time taking better photo's of Apples products for your articles than you do with other products.
I'd ask if Apple was paying you or giving you free gear, like they have done with reviewers before, but i dont think Anand would atleast stoop that low.
rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Maybe because Apple products are so hyped and popular? It's a known fact that the iPad 2 will outsell the Xoom by a huge margin, and more people would like to know about it.And clearly these benchamrks prove this isn't junk. It proves the Tegra 2 is junk.
ncb1010 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Well, the Tegra 2 actually beats the A5 in CPU tests. So it comes down to this:CPU or GPU...which do you prefer?
DeathChill - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Just curious, where did you get this information? I haven't seen anything so I'm interested.rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
No it didn't? Both have dual core Cortex A9s clocked at 1 GHz with 1MB L2 cache. And if it did beat the iPad, it was probably Apple's strict as hell throttling system causing it.DigitalFreak - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Go away little fanboy. The adults are having a conversation.rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Fanboy? I am stating a fact. Apple's throttling system is crazy. Its devices almost never run at max frequency.ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
The A5 in the iPad seems to run at 900 mhz.rish95 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
No it doesn't. Run GeekBench 10 times closing it completely each time and you will get a 1000 MHz reading. I tried it.ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
So, geekbench detects an iPad and spits out 1 ghz? According to Anandtech, it is clocked at 900 mhz as it is slower than a 1 ghz dual core Cortex A9 in pure cpu tests. Regardless of the clock speed, it performs like it is clocked at 900 mhz.nafhan - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Eh... there's more to the buying decision than hardware here. Generally incompatible software stacks and purchasing methods ensure that!Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I saw the same thing on two different sites..but am entirely too tired to remember where. They were benchmarks..that seemed to be only CPU, and the Tegra 2 was doing quite well. One thing we all need to keep in mind is that Honeycomb is beta and still needs to be optimized with the hardware. For instance, the Xoom performs much better than the other tegra 2 wielding devices that have already been benchmarked..why? (Atrix)StevenN - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
It is a fully shipping product that people pay full price for and is not Beta.geok1ng - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Given that BOTH devices suffer the HUGE handicap of not running x86 code,And that BOTH devices operate based on online software stores, even my mistrust in anything Apple must concede that not only the iPad2 is a good product at a fair price point, but it wipes the floor with the competition's @$$#$.
CptTripps - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Tegra 2 is junk?People still seem to like their IPAD 1, which gets beat by the Xoom so... is the IPad now junk?
I need some casual gaming, web browsing and multimedia. I along with many others could give a shit how many fps it gets in the Egypt test.
ltcommanderdata - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Isn't iPad marketshare in the last quarter something like 73%? In other words, the iPad is 4 times more popular than other tablets. In that context, devoting 4 times the attention to it is actually proportional.Exodite - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
The real questions is how popular tablets are though.I've yet to see any evidence that actual people, as opposed to organisations, purchase tablets in any significant numbers.
Not that I'm denying that the iPad 2 is the best tablet out there, I'm just not seeing how market share in an insignificant market plays any real part.
Concillian - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
"I've yet to see any evidence that actual people, as opposed to organisations, purchase tablets in any significant numbers."Hey, we own a tablet... because my wife's work gave one to every employee as a Christmas gift.
Otherwise, we definitely would not.
Most often used for:
eBooks
Angry Birds
Not exactly pushing the envelope on technology... lol. Definitely wouldn't go buy one ourselves. It's a huge pain to use this thing on the web. easierr to use my wife's blackberry than to type on a touchscreen.
KoolAidMan1 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Compare it with other consumer electronics. In the first year the iPad sold more than the Nintendo Wii, and it took three years for the XBox 350 to hit 15 million sales.It is a blockbuster product by any measure, and I think it is pretty safe to call it "popular" :)
EarthCore - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
The iPad sold more than the Wii in its first year? Hmm, I highly doubt that. I remember the Wii being sold out everywhere online and retail for at least its entire year if not longer.The Wii sold something like ~85mil units in a little over 4yrs.
Now, you just sound like a fan boy.
rquick - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Yeah - go look it up on Wiki - iPad sold more units in its first 9 months than Wii. While they were both clearly wildly popular and to some extent supply limited, the Wii apparently sold about 10 million units in the first nine months while the ipad sold about 14 million. Not that it matters, the point is that the device is too popular for the only purchasers to be corporate. I would even bet that the corporate buyers were actually pretty late to the party as they usually are. Everybody I know (except me) bought their own ipad. Mine was a gift. I didn't want it but I couldn't talk her out of it - probably because she knew me better than I do.vision33r - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Maybe you live in a small town or campus. The iPad is everywhere in NYC. 14 million sold last year is no small number. Analysts are predicting 25 million iPads this year. With the strong initial sales, there's no doubt Apple will achieve that number in less than a year.Netbook is dead, I don't own any Netbook anymore. They are just subpar notebooks and not a replacement for a full notebook. iPad beats a netbook when it comes to web browsing and gaming.
eriku16 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I live in LA and only saw just 2 or 3 ipads. I don't hang out where they would typically be seen, ie Starbucks...The netbook is not dead. They serve a purpose as intended. They are full, fledge PCs with standard ports ,REAL OSs using REAL applications. Not some toy cellphone OS.
My Atom/ION based, Ubuntu nettop HTPC can play 45Mbs M2TS streams the ipad/2 would choke on.
Aloonatic - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Your response seems like he classic Apple hater/denier that we see on here all the time, who might know a great deal about technical aspects of computing and what can be done on a device like a linux netbook, but have almost zero comprehension of what the general pubic actually want.When will people here (and on DT) get it that a lot of people don't care about having "full fledged PCs..." and "...real OSs using real applications", whatever a "real" OS or application is?
They want something that is fun and easy to use, that gets the job done, that's it. The technicalities of how it gets done is not something that the vast majority care about.
People largely use MS OSes (windows) purely out of familiarity, and that they know about nothing else. Give people a go on these "unreal"(??) Oses and maybe you will be surprised at how easy people find the transition.
The only thing that I can really agree with you about is the standard ports issue, which bugs the hell out of me. That companies like Apple and SONY insist on their proprietary stuff is so irritating.
EarthCore - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
How is not being able to view over 40% of the internet that uses Flash & Java getting the job done?Netbooks, my Apple fan boy friend, do NOT pose this problem.
The average consumer doesn't know the technical specs of their netbook OS, but they sure do appreciate being able to share files with their friends and family w/o having to hook up their netbook to a....what do you call it? Real OS?
The fact that ALL iOS devices have to be tethered to a "Real OS" to do any simple file management job sort of kills your whole argument of, "iPad it gets the job done" doesn't it?
Azethoth - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
What is this 40% of internets I cannot see? Should I care about it? I mean I see "The Shockwave / Flash plugin has crashed" CONSTANTLY on my PC using Chrome. Am I missing out on something? Because even tho I had a Flash Crash, the website is still miraculously available ...? Weird rite? Was it like authored to be usable without flash?If I went there with my iPad would it say "go away iPad user" or will I just see a website and navigate around it?
What is the benefit to me of some Adobe crapware that has outlived its usefulness and now serves only as an attack vector for malware?
EarthCore - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
How does the iPad beat a netbook when it comes to browsing when it can't display over 40% of the websites that use Java and Flash?As far as licensing media goes, netbooks can display all media a laptop can display.
iPad has restrictive media licensing policies. Try searching for a Vevo music video on the iPad. You will get ZERO results. Try the same search on a netbook on Youtube. See the difference? What koolaid are you drinking?
Real physical keyboard vs virtual keyboard, no need to explain this one. But if you really want to have a WPM typing contest on your precious iPad vs my netbook...then game on!
Lastly, I'd want to see some benchies between Intel Atom and the A5 before sheepishly saying that iPad trumps netbooks.
Jesus, the Apple fan boys have no capacity for independent thought do they?
kmmatney - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
For the average Joe, a tablet provides easier access to email, games and applications, and typically provides a much better web browsing experience. I don't see the point in a netbook, really - get a real notebook for real work, and use a tablet for leisure.solipsism - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
it’s Apple’s 3rd most profitable business segment and will likely be the 2nd most profitable sometime this year, only behind the iPhone. Apple make more profit than MS now and that is helped by additional iPad sales, not inspite of, like the loss leader “me to” products that come out each month claiming to be "<Apple product>-killers”.On top of that the iPad is the fasting selling CE and Apple made this market segment viable despite other vendors having a couple decades to figure it out. Sure, it all makes sense and seems obvious now that it was explained to you assuming Apple did nothing special here. Where was Moto, Nokia and RiM’s tablets? Where was MS’ WinMo tablet OS?
So why again do you think that that this market isn’t popular or profitable?
ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
"On top of that the iPad is the fasting selling CE"If CE = Consumer Electronic....
Kinect sold 10 million in 3 or 4 months. Quite a bit faster than iPad with 15 million in 9 months with about half in Q4.
solipsism - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
It is sold to consumers and it does contain electronics, but it’s an accessory to a device so I don’t include that in any such listing. Do you include headphones and power adapters as CE? I surely don’t.wytworm - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
...and yet the digitaltrends.com and the Guinness Book of World records does.http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/xbox-kinect-sa...
Spazweasel - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
The "Guiness" in the "Guiness Book of World Records" is the beer company. Really.I don't think their opinion on anything other than beer is authoritative, accurate, educated, informed, or relevant. These are the same people that keep track of biggest burritos and largest tumors. Quoting them on matters of consumer electronics is like quoting the National Enquirer on... anything.
ncb1010 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
27% to 73% is a 1:3 ratio...not 1:4.ncb1010 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
And that is not including e-readers like the Amazon Kindle or Nook Color which I classify as a tablet. If you include that, Apple's market share dips to about 50% because of the 12 million e-readers sold in 2010.akedia - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
And that's not including MP3 players, smartphones, netbooks, laptops, desktops, or supercomputers, which I classify as tablets too!You're conflating two very different device categories to make the argument that a *mere* 50% market share for a single device isn't particularly significant? *slow claps* Quite the argument you make there. Quite the argument.
ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Tablet is a form factor which both the Kindle reader and the iPad share. It has nothing to do with the screen tech involved or the software used.sean.crees - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Tablet is not just a form factor. If that is your argument, then technically a magazine is the same "form factor", so then we must include all issued magazines.A tablet is an experience, one you cannot get on an e-reader, a magazine, a smartphone, a notebook, a PC etc etc etc. It is a unique device with its own unique segment.
Tablets include devices like Ipad, Ipad2, Xoom, Touchpad etc etc.
solipsism - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
You can install the Kindle app on Windows and Macs, too. I guess that makes them eReaders which you also classify as tablets, which makes the iPad marketshare under 5%. OMG APPLE IS TEH SUXS!!!1 :\ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Umm, are we talking desktop computer Mac/Windows computers? Or are we talking notebook clamshells? tablet is a physical form factor. It has nothing to do with if it runs Kindle on Mac/Windows or not.djgandy - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Yeah one product sells 3 times more than an entire group of products.So all the products in the 27% combined should get 1/3rd of the review time of the iPad.
Ringer9 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Um, "4 times more popular" means 5 times as popular. Also, as ncb1010 said, 27% to 73% is much closer to a 1:3 ratio, so the iPad is roughly 2 times more popular than other tablets. In other words, you don't know what you're saying.rquick - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
The multiple in 1:3 is 3, as in "3 times more popular." And 4 times more popular really does mean 4 times not 5. It is pretty simple math really. I thin what you meant was that 4 times more popular means 4 out of 5. As if it really matters. The actual multiple isn't as important as the fact that one single device is more popular than the entire remainder of the market put together, even if you try to pad the market numbers with single purpose devices that are clearly not meant to compete in that market (dedicated e-readers). The color Nook should probably be included though.ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
The Kindle runs apps and has an app store...so, I don't see how it is truly "dedicated". That device alone accounts for 7 million sales in 2010 which puts a big chink out of iPads 73% market share(calculated not counting Kindles) as it sold 15 million in 2010.Azethoth - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
No, the iPad market share was over 90%. (Apple counts units actually sold to customers vs other manufacturers counting units sold to stores who may sell to customers later on so stats are approximate).Consensus expectations are it will drop to 80% share this year and possibly drop from the #1 spot in 2014 or so.
However, this review makes me question such a large drop. Android software looks like it will not be competitive till summer, and the Xoom is faring poorly in the benchmarks. Maybe if someone else produces an Android standard bearer.
My head wants to tell me Apple is making the classic Mac vs PC mistake here by not being "open", but my gut is telling me things are just not the same in this space.
rquick - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
You "gut" is exactly correct. The world of tablets is not the same as the world of general purpose pcs. Just like the argument about tablets versus netbooks. Apples to oranges (pun unintentional). When people pick up a tablet, most of them do not expect or need the full complexity of a computer os. I have been using an iPad for several months now and I do not even notice that I am "missing" 40% of the internet. I suspect that number is still wildly inflated and falling fast. But the point is that I don't miss flash at all. The one thing I do miss is the lack of a file system. But most users don't.mech0r - Friday, March 18, 2011 - link
"I suspect that number is still wildly inflated and falling fast."Wtf are you Steve Jobs himself? Or did you just say that cuz stevie told you that?
why do you "suspect" and not go "research" before repeating mindlessly what your cult leader tells you
tipoo - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Possibly 3G/non 3G, and first generation being tested again too.BrooksT - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
What do you want? The iPad is >80% market share in a market Apple created. iPad 2 is kind of a big release.Do you think Anand or elsewhere should ignore market share, history, and user interest when deciding amount of coverage? Does avoiding "favoritism" mean giving equal amounts of coverage to Intel and Via CPUs?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
There are three different models that we're testing (AT&T, Verizon and WiFi) and we've got a second WiFi that we borrowed so we can speed up battery life testing. Apple doesn't actually sample us most of the time and all Apple review samples go back after ~30 days (and we never accept money for reviews so that's out of the discussion as well). Because we don't get sampled, we have to do a lot of parallel testing in order to still deliver timely reviews. Not to mention that given the baseband issues we've seen in the past with Apple and other recently released smartphones, we want to have as many datapoints as possible to make sure we discover any issues that may exist.The PowerVR SGX 543MP2 is a particularly interesting GPU. It's something we'll see variants of in other SoCs going forward. We would've shown the same excitement and rush to test for any other platform that it debuted on.
As far as the pictures go. We have different folks do the photos for each article. Some products are easier to photograph in a way that looks cooler. I'd argue that the Atrix and Nexus S shots are just as good as what we've published here.
Take care,
Anand
chrnochime - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Anand,Do you know or could you tell us which other tablet that's coming up in 2011 would sport a variant of the SGX 543MP2(or 4)? Now that your test shows the GPU is actually substantially quicker than the Tegra2, I would want to wait for some other tablet that sports a larger resolution.
Thanks.
metafor - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
To date, I don't believe any have been announced. IIRC, TI is the only other SoC manufacturer with the 543MP in their roadmap and that won't be until the OMAP5 series next year.But that doesn't necessarily mean no one will catch up to the iPad 2 in GPU performance. Many manufacturers (Samsung, ST) are using ARM's Mali core, which if scaled up could be competitive. nVidia has their next-generation Geforce ULP coming in Tegra 3 and Qualcomm has their Adreno 220 later this year, so there are plenty of players.
KoolAidMan1 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Get over yourself.The iPad sold 15 million units in a year and the iPad 2 will likely double that. No other tablet will come anywhere close to that. It is obvious why Anand is covering that device.
It is also funny that you refer to the iPad 2 as "junk" when it is superior to the Xoom and every other tablet out there in terms of hardware, physical form factor, and application selection.
winterspan - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
How is this a hard concept to grasp? It has nothing to do with Apple paying anyone anything. The fact of the matter is that the iPad has and the iPad2 will sell tens of millions of units, far more than all the android tablets put together so far.It's a pretty simple business case:
1) $$$ = number of eyeballs looking at website articles (and hence advertising banners)
2) number of eyeballs = popularity of each article x number of articles
3) popularity of articles = popularity of article topic (product being previewed/reviewed)
4) iPad popularity > individual Android tablet popularity
5) iPad content popularity > other tablet content popularity
6) iPad content revenue > other tablet content revenue
EarthCore - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Hmm, I'd say it's either favoritism or incompetence Anandtech? Which excuse are you going to choose? Why?Well, here goes a few things I noticed off the bat.
I grabbed the GL benchmark app, and here a few indicators that it needs to be re-worked for the Xoom:
The Xoom has 27 native Open GL extensions (MOTODEV > Products > XOOM™ MZ600)
the GL Benchmark app only found 21 (GLBenchmark Result Details of Motorola Xoom)
So off the bat with the app not using all available OpenGL extensions for honeycomb or for the Nvidia platform I'd say that it's "off."
Secondly, the app even incorrectly reads the screen size at 1280 x 752.
So right now I say these needs to be updated before I got too crazy with the results.
I didn't do a cross reference of the utilized libs over the ones "left on the table" but if I get a few minutes I will. But, if these guys at Anandtech are supposed to be "pros" at this, why the glaring omission?
I would like to see Engadget...oops, I mean Anandtech, update this article to reflect this and redo these tests when the playing field is balanced.
kmmatney - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Get over yourself. Motorola Xoom is actually rendering at 1280x752, since the System Bar in Honeycomb is always taking up screen space.djgandy - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
^^^ What he said.The same applies on Windows when applications create 640x480 windows. The rendering space is smaller due to window borders.
runner50783 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Stop your trolling! I don't see any favoritism here and never has on any of Anantech's reviews, tell that to Engadget, Gizmodo and the like.I did not expected anything less than this kind of detailed scrutiny on such an important device, plus due to the lack of true technically educated reviewers for Apple hardware Anandtech has become sort of the reference review site for this devices, a title that if I were Anand, will do what ever I can to keep.
eXces - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
it turned out to be an incredible device, i think i will give my iPad to my daughter and buy the iPad 2ltcommanderdata - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Thanks for the quick test on graphics performance ahead of your iPad 2 full review.I noticed that in the Egypt and Pro benchmarks, the frame rate with FSAA is actually the same or higher than without FSAA for the iPad 2. Could you comment on why that would be? I would guess that the SGX543MP2 without FSAA it's purely shader ALU limited, while with FSAA there is dedicated AA hardware so shader performance is not impacted and the A5 has lots of extra memory bandwidth or the SGX is very memory bandwidth efficient so that is not a limitation.
And for the Inifinity Blade comparison, would it be possible to post iPhone 4 shots as well? I believe the higher resolution textures, bump mapping, and specular shaders were already in place in the iPhone 4 version. AA did seem enabled in the iPhone 4, but perhaps only 2x since the iPad's AA looks higher/better.
rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
It probably has a lot of memory bandwidth.I'm guessing:
800 MHz LPDDR2?
metafor - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Tile-based rendering suffers little to no loss from AA implementations due to their early throwaway nature.stm1185 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Surpised how faster it is then the Tegra 2. Even if you factor in the resolution disparity, with the Xoom having about 25% more pixels, it still is really impressive.dj_aris - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
You know what would be interesting? To see the exact same benchmarks on a PC GPU. How do these tablets perform against some real Nvidia or ATI hardware? Or even some Intel integrated GPU? And to take it even further, are they more capable than a handheld game console (PSP / DS)?ET - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
This is way more powerful than the PSP and 3DS (DS is so underpowered anything would beat it). I agree it'd be interesting to put it in perspective with current and past PC cards and with consoles (well, it'd beat the Wii, but I wonder how far it has to go to catch up to the PS3 and Xbox 360).I believe that a year or two from now phones (and certainly tablets) would be able to drive 720p or even 1080p high quality games. Hook one to a TV, link a controller via bluetooth and you'd have a real console that would compete with current ones (with enough leftover CPU power to let you answer calls via a bluetooth headset while you're playing).
rquick - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
You say that the handheld should compete with the consoles in a year or two, but the consoles are also going to take a generation leap in the near future. We might see the next generation xbox and ps sometime next year - my fingers are crossed. From looking at the numbers, I would have to guess that the current xbox is already 6-8 times more powerful than the ipad2. Just a guess, but I would also bet that is overly conservative. The next leap in console graphics should be enormous by comparison since their expected life cycle could be 5 years or more. Once that happens, I don't think the ability to compete with the current (old) consoles would be very a big selling point for a device that costs more than the new console. Again. just a guess on prices, but I think Sony proved that consoles won't sell at $600.tipoo - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Way more powerful than the PSP, and eons ahead of the DS. The PSP2/NGP will use the quad core version of this same GPU though.TEAMSWITCHER - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
The Android fan-boys have spent a good deal of smack-talk on the Tegra-2 processor. I assumed they knew what they were talking about, and the iPad 2 would be a bit anemic in the graphics department. This is a huge revelation - I hope more mainstream web sites pick up on this story.bplewis24 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
If you didn't see this coming you probably don't have the best grasp of the subject matter. It has been very clear for a while that the PowerVR SGX543 would be better than the GeForce ULV GPU in Tegra2.The CPUs are fairly close in performance, with Tegra 2 generally maintaining an edge in the synthetic benchmarks so far. Go read other reviews (including on this site) for that info, but the GPU performance of the A5 SoC is superior.
The "smack talk" was not wrong, your interpretation of it was. And until we get the full iPad2 review from Anandtech, it still remains to be seen which overall hardware/software package is better. Remember, the Xoom has Android 3.0 while iOS 4.3 is still pretty much inferior from a tablet perspective.
Brandon
TEAMSWITCHER - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Sorry, I didn't fully understand the subtleties of low-voltage GPU specifications. I was under the impression that the Xoom and other Android tablets would have more competitive silicon - maybe the others will.solipsism - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
"Remember, the Xoom has Android 3.0 while iOS 4.3 is still pretty much inferior from a tablet perspective.”Remember, that’s a load of crap. Apple designed iOS for iPad long before Honeycomb was even on Google’s radar. The fact is that iOS for iPad is much better designed for the tablet than any other mobile OS on the market. Android 3.0 as some nice features but it’s still playing performance catch up to an iPad OS that was demoed over a year ago.
UltimateTruth - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
"Honeycomb" was in development for tablets for several years. Long before the iPad. Having some tweaks,the iOS is really no different on the iPad than it is on the iPhone. It's the SAME OS!solipsism - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Same OS as on Macs? Sure, they all use Darwin.Same CocoaTouch development platform for the main I/O? Sure, they are both iOS?
Same OS that can be moved from device to the other with only a few tweaks as you suggest? Not even close. We’re talking an entirely new UI to accommodate the aspect ratio, size and pixel density differences.
bplewis24 - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
So, Anand's Xoom/Honeycomb review is a "load of crap" huh? Maybe you should check it out:"Simply put: the Xoom puts the iPad to shame. Particularly over WiFi the web browsing experience is just awesome. It’s like using a netbook, which in this case isn’t meant as a knock but rather a compliment.
It’s not all about performance though, functionally the Honeycomb Browser is a huge improvement over anything else out there: it supports tabbed browsing. I can’t stress how much better this makes browsing on a tablet. "
"Honeycomb feels a lot like Google’s take on iOS without sacrificing any of what makes Android unique. It’s a healthy combination of the appliance-like iOS without giving up any of the user facing customization & flexibility that Android users love."
"I’m impressed with what Google has done with the UI. It’s a definite modernization of what Android is all about. There are elements of the Android UI we’re used to within Honeycomb but they aren’t all that prevalent at the surface. This looks and feels like a brand new OS for Google."
"Am I more likely to use the Xoom than the iPad? Yes. The hardware is faster but more importantly, the software is better suited for multitasking. I’m a bigger fan of Honeycomb’s multitasking UI & notification system compared to the double-tap-home and passive notifications you get with the iPad and iOS. I can be more productive with the Xoom than I can be with the iPad as a result. I don’t believe Honeycomb’s UI is perfect by any means, it’s just more multitasking oriented than iOS is at this point."
Nice try, though.
rquick - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
"Remember, the Xoom has Android 3.0 while iOS 4.3 is still pretty much inferior from a tablet perspective." That was a joke, right? Pretty funny.metafor - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Actually, as an iOS user who played with Honeycomb for the first time a week back, I have to say, iOS is showing its age. It was a great interface for its time but many advances (better notifications, widgets, stacks, homescreens, fast multitasking, consolidation of different social networking feeds, etc..) in other OS's UI's like WebOS, WP7 and now Android have pretty much surpassed it.Time will tell if iOS will change to catch up to these features. Folders are godawful and awkward; that and program switching seem "tacked on" rather than an intuitive part of the OS. Then there's the lack of consolidated hubs, which makes checking facebook, then email, then thumblr kinda cumbersome.
bplewis24 - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
No joke. This is pulled straight from Anand's review:"Simply put: the Xoom puts the iPad to shame. Particularly over WiFi the web browsing experience is just awesome. It’s like using a netbook, which in this case isn’t meant as a knock but rather a compliment.
It’s not all about performance though, functionally the Honeycomb Browser is a huge improvement over anything else out there: it supports tabbed browsing. I can’t stress how much better this makes browsing on a tablet. "
"Honeycomb feels a lot like Google’s take on iOS without sacrificing any of what makes Android unique. It’s a healthy combination of the appliance-like iOS without giving up any of the user facing customization & flexibility that Android users love."
"I’m impressed with what Google has done with the UI. It’s a definite modernization of what Android is all about. There are elements of the Android UI we’re used to within Honeycomb but they aren’t all that prevalent at the surface. This looks and feels like a brand new OS for Google."
"Am I more likely to use the Xoom than the iPad? Yes. The hardware is faster but more importantly, the software is better suited for multitasking. I’m a bigger fan of Honeycomb’s multitasking UI & notification system compared to the double-tap-home and passive notifications you get with the iPad and iOS. I can be more productive with the Xoom than I can be with the iPad as a result. I don’t believe Honeycomb’s UI is perfect by any means, it’s just more multitasking oriented than iOS is at this point."
Nice try, though.
Aikouka - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
It looks like the only thing those screen shots are missing is anisotropic filtering as you can see how blurry the tiles get as the squeeze together. I wonder if the iPad 2 is capable of doing AA and AF together with decent numbers?Mike1111 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
No Xoom FSAA numbers?GnillGnoll - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Nvidia doesn't support multisampling on Tegra.sarge78 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Looks like you guys hit the cap GLBenchmark 2.0 pro (~55fps) Without it you'd see a similar result to Egypt.sarge78 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
cap *in GLBenchmark...Excuse the bad English, it's been a long night ;)
Roll on NGP!
GnillGnoll - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
The cap is not in GLBenchmark, iOS is limited to 60 fps (Android devices usually have similar limits, but it's device specific).While the total result which represents an average is lower, it's quite likely parts of the test run are hitting this limit.
y2kBug - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
I just wish I could run Honeycomb on it.tipoo - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Yeah, a dual boot would be awesome.mrdeez - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Apple's ipad2 has a more mature OS, just like when the first Android phone came out. So, even though they are "late" to the party, I believe Honeycomb to have the most features and by summer as they update it, it will be even or surpass apple in these benchmarks.xype - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Heh, that's starting to sound like a running gag. "Android: 6-12 months down the line, it will be Much Better™."Well, duh. Apple gets ahead every time they release a product, be it phone or tablet. None of the average consumers will ever care about Android if _right now_ it's not competitive and whatever Apple sells in their store is better than whatever Android vendors are selling.
Sure, yeah, 2-3 years down the road, Android devices will totally dominate the iPad 2. But something tells me that won't be what Apple will be selling at that point.
mrdeez - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Like I said, Android will catch up and surpass apple. Apple is hindered by their closed system and marriage to itunes. I don't deny the ipad2 is a great device I just dont like any company forcing their policies on me.I use the current android phone domination as an example.
Android will dominate sooner than that but that is not my reason for wanting the xoom. I believe the ipad to be more of a casual CE and the xoom(and devices that use android) more professional.
Do I ant Apple to fail, NO!
I
jharper12 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Not really sure why Android folks get their panties in a bunch over stuff like this. I'm an Android user, and I'm thrilled every time Apple raises the bar. Tegra 3 is due out in August (allegedly) and is supposed to be five times as powerful as Tegra 2. Tegra 2 had the advantage for a time, now it got crushed. If we actually see Tegra 3 by the end of the year, hopeful here but not holding my breath, then Android tablets will have the performance advantage for 3-6 months. We're also not going to get a super high resolution display until Apple does it, so again, be thankful when Apple pushes other hardware companies to kick it up a notch. One thing's for sure, these benchmarks seem to indicate the iPad 3 will be able to push all those pixels around, pretty impressive stuff.ncb1010 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Define super high resolution display? Android was leading the iPhone by a wide margin in pixel density until 8 months ago. Same thing is happening with tablets. 30% more pixels on the xoom in practically the same surface area.jharper12 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Super high resolution = 2048 x 1536. Although I'd also accept 1920 x 1440 or 1920 x 1200. Yep, the Xoom has a higher resolution display, definitely a brilliant thing. I certainly wouldn't want to pay $500 for 1024 x 768, but 1280 x 800 is palatable. Personally I bought a Nook Color and a 32GB class 10 microsd card, for a total of $299. Sitting this gen out with a cheap alternative, power and resolution are going to see a serious bump in about a year.Yes, a myriad of manufacturers do eventually offer higher resolutions on the Android platform, but typically as screen makers come out with new products. Apple literally has a spec in mind, and finds a supplier that wants to reap the benefits of hundreds of millions in sales from a single company. See the difference?
It's widely rumored and entirely likely that the next iPad will have a resolution of 2048 x 1536. Any another manufacturer can match this, but it'll cost them more than it'll cost Apple. I've said in the past, and I'll say it again, Apple's real advantage is that they know they'll order 10 million of whatever they are making. When you can buy in that volume, you can get a 2048 x 1536 screen made that nobody else has widely available yet for an extremely competitive price. Think about it, that represents hundreds of millions of dollars for a screen manufacturer... it gives them the ability to start a new product line without any risk at all, the only downside being that all of their capacity will be taken up by one customer for a significant period of time.
Again, no need to get touchy or defensive. There's simply no denying that Apple can purchase in greater volumes with less risk than pretty much anyone else... although maybe Microsoft will be a resolution winner in the near future, Nokia is a serious hardware powerhouse.
ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Apply the Apple Tax and it all evens out...lower component costs or not. A lot of these tablet manufacturers have their own display divisions and so the point about Apple being able to dictate what type of screens people make is really moot.solipsism - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
You’re referring to less than accurate sub-pixel counting on AMOLED displays. Not exactly a slam dunk.So it’s been almost a year since the 326ppi iPhone 4 display was demoed. Where are the competing displays? Why doesn’t the iPhone 4 have a bad rap for rendering graphics with 4x the pixels of the original iPhone when the 23% higher pixel number is being stated as being the reason why the iPad 2 kicks its ass so thoroughly and why the iPad 1 is right on its ass?
Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Retina is nice, Super AMOLED is gorgeous.. and Super AMOLED Plus is cleaner, brighter, and lower power usage (Supposedly). I wish a tablet would have that for a screen. Samsung makes Apple's A5..why can't they put that screen on it?ncb1010 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Do a benchmark that uses more than 512 mb of VRAM and watch iPad 2's score crash.rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Uhh...more than 512MB VRAM on a display like that? Never ever gonna happen..unless you're playing Crysis 2. To use over 512MB in most titles you need to hit 1680 x 1050 or even 1920 x 1080.ncb1010 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
It really depends. In a lot of cases, you can trade processing power for ram usage or vice versa to attain the same effect. For instance, instead of having 1 model for something with the highest level of detail that gets rendered all the time, you would use 2, 3, 4 (or more models) that are of different qualities. The only limit to doing this is how much ram you have for vertex buffers and texture loading. As the object moves closer or farther away, the LOD system adjusts which is displayed as details you see at 1 meter is different than what you see at 1 inch or 100 meters. This saves triangle and texture processing but uses more RAM. It may take more man hours as well for modeling but there is commercial software out there to both reduce and tessellate models practically at will. Mip Mapping is the process of generating multiple textures automatically but they have to be all stored in memory. Again, this will save texel processing time.Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I think he meant the regular RAM..TareX - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
This makes Tegra 2 seem old-gen compared to the SGX543MP2...Disappointed. I might even pass on the Atrix and just get the Nexus S, waiting for the Nexus that will follow it.
StormyParis - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Maybe I'm becoming too un-geeky for Anand. Maybe I need to get my info somewhere else. But The fact is:I have plenty of questions regarding the iPad:
- How do I really get content on and off it ? Automagically ? w/o iTunes ?
- How can I get something akin to HP's Touch to Synch ?
- Is the HP good enough to listen to music ?
- Is it really worth it getting myself locked into iTunes ?
- Would I have to re-encode my 400+ GB of FLAC-ripped CDs ?
I don't really care about the iPad's GPU performance. More about features, or, rather, ergonomics and workflow.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
That'll be coming in our review of the iPad 2 :) This is just a little teaser for those who follow the SoC space.Take care,
Anand
winterspan - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Did you not notice you are reading an article title "Apple iPad 2 GPU Performance Explored: PowerVR SGX543MP2 Benchmarked"This is not macworld...
djgandy - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Well some of us are interested in GPU performance. In fact, isn't this Anandtech the website renowed for CPU and GPU reviews?This is the top of the range GPU in mobile, and Anand are showing us how it squares up.
scarface74 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
I have plenty of questions regarding the iPad:- How do I really get content on and off it ? Automagically ? w/o iTunes ?
You don't -- but 87% of the market seems to like iTunes well enough.....
- How can I get something akin to HP's Touch to Synch ?
Did I miss something? Last time I checked the HP tablet isn't for sale.....
- Is the HP good enough to listen to music ?
- Is it really worth it getting myself locked into iTunes ?
Yes, because the quality of Android apps is so much better than iOS apps. I can understand your concern.
- Would I have to re-encode my 400+ GB of FLAC-ripped CDs ?
http://itunes.apple.com/app/golden-ear/id407945101...
Azethoth - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
"How do I really get content on and off it ? Automagically ?"DropBox
"Is it really worth it getting myself locked into iTunes ?"
As soon as iTunes starts delivering high rez music, yes. They are currently discussing this with Music companies. Meanwhile you are stuck with HDTracks and a few others or the bands themselves if you want high res music (poor selection of content). By high rez I mean > CD quality.
"Would I have to re-encode my 400+ GB of FLAC-ripped CDs ?"
Yes. Your 400+GB of lossless music is way too big for your iDevice. So like the rest of us, during the sync process you will re-encode to some bogus but small mp3 compression.
Thats one part of it. Personally I deal with it by only syncing specific playlists.
The other part depends on your home ecosystem. This is a good starter article: http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/logitech_s... which if you follow all its links will drive you mad and make you buy a bunch of high end stereo gear. Good luck.
Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I'll be the first to reasonably answer your queries."-How do I really get content on and off it ? Automagically ? w/o iTunes ?"
There are a few basic, but annoying ways to get content on and off the device w/o your computer nearby. E-Books can be acquired through iBooks, Amazon, B&N with in-app purchases. You can get pictures from your camera with the purchase of an adapter to be able to plug in a SD card. There is also some way to wirelessly get pics from an eye-fi SD card right as you take the picture. Don't forget about screen capture either. Songs, Movies, Apps/Games..all through iTunes unfortunately, but can be done on the go at least. You can't expect the closed OS to be open.
"-How can I get something akin to HP's Touch to Synch ?"
Maybe in iOS 5..but I doubt it. Android is open so if demand is high enough..it will be, at minimum, some app. Blackberry seems to be working on something similar, but I cannot be sure yet.
"-Is the HP good enough to listen to music ?"
HP and Monster have been working together lately, and there is a chance their tablet will be capable of some nice audio. However..a device as large as a tablet vs a simple mp3 player for music? maybe if you aren't moving anywhere the whole time. I doubt it will equal Cowon quality on music, but I'm betting it will be at least a little superior to the iPad in this department.. if Dr. Dre has a say anyway.
"-Is it really worth it getting myself locked into iTunes ?"
Getting "locked" into anything is always counter-productive to future choice. You aren't truly locked in unless you count DRM and don't want to try to bypass it. No matter what platform you choose..your apps won't go to any other regardless. iTunes is loved by many, but also hated by many. The main complaint I hear about the iPods is having to use iTunes all the time. Many people I've talked to with iPhone 3G/S' never have installed iTunes on their comp..they just handle it all on their actual phone. Regardless of how large & slow iTunes may be..regardless of how messy it makes your music collection.. You always have the option to get your music/videos elsewhere and sending them through iTunes just the once.
"-Would I have to re-encode my 400+ GB of FLAC-ripped CDs ?"
Well..I hope you don't plan on trying to get 400+ GB on any tablet..cause even with an Android 64 GB + 128 GB SDXC memory card you only have 192 GB, minus your other content. That being said, you do Not have to re-encode..if you only put on a little at a time. There is a FLAC player App for iOS for $10 that works great.
as far as ergonomics go..I don't remember seeing anything about a tablet being made ergonomically, but they are getting easier to hold onto. I know the Eee Pads will have a material on the back that keeps them from slipping, and the iPad 2 is very light. The G-Slate almost looks ergonomic.
Since WebOS and the new RIM Tablet OS are both not on the market, and Honeycomb is a brand new baby OS..deciding which will have the best workflow is very difficult. RIM is always aimed at business..WebOS has always been positive in the past, but the guy who used to be in charge was hired on by Google to lead the Honeycomb team. Android is specifically designed to be full of features and have the best integration (i.e. taking a picture and with 2 seconds and 2 presses its on facebook), but it's basically still beta for now. iOS is designed with simplicity in mind. When it works fully it is nice and smooth for what it does, but is not really competing much in the extra feature category. It is, however, the only Tablet OS that can be considered Mature for now.
rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Everyone spread this article around the internet! We need to shut up all the Android fanboys for a while.jharper12 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Ugh...DigitalFreak - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
I think your mommy has your titty dinner waiting for you, little man.jmcb - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
But but but....specs dont matter....I always hear that in articles like this.....until the iDevice is shown to be better spec wise...
So which one is it?
solipsism - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Of specs didn’t matter then there would never be a reason to upgrade an iDevice.You’re misinterpreting what is actually states: specs alone aren’t revealing if you aren’t considering the SW that will run on the HW.
Without an efficient, well written OS, SDK and drivers you need to have more RAM, faster CPU and GPU just to accomplish the same tasks. These tests show that the Xoom barely beats a year old iPhone with one core Cortex-A8, and get trounced by the iPad 2.
UltimateTruth - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
As a gamer,it matters. However, how is that faster GPU going to work for you doing everyday tasks?LordSojar - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
"Everyone spread this article around the internet! We need to shut up all the Android fanboys for a while."^ Really? Are you that insecure? You have to bash other people's viewpoints to bolster your own? What sad sad people you are. You are "taking sides" for a company versus another? Are you that stupid? These companies want your money. They aren't your friends, and they really don't care about you at all; you could jump off a bridge tomorrow, your entire family could be wiped out... so long as you bought their product, they really don't care.
And yet... here you are... supporting one company or another. Why? Does it give you some satisfaction in knowing the product you bought is slightly superior to another persons? Grow up, all of you, Android or iOS user alike (or any other [INSERT BRAND HERE] user).
The iPad 2 is a decent piece of hardware with nice ascetic quality. iOS is a giant pile of garbage in regards to being a tablet operating system. Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) is far superior, but lacks the number of apps and isn't totally polished in terms of bugs or performance. Generally speaking, I'd say the two are equal... Why must you idiots bicker over any other points?
Gherkin - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
In what ways is iOS a giant pile of garbage? Especially in regards to Honeycomb? To make such a rude and biased comment seems like an insecure reaction to me.Seriously how is iOS garbage? It is more stable, more secure, more mature, etc., etc. Seriously, the iPad 2 is clearly better in almost all regards, both hardware and software. Why do you Android people so want Apple to fail? I mean your hate is so intense. You even admit the hardware is better, and you chastise the writer for making a big deal over a company, and yet your "garbage" comment is exactly the same thing. Every reviewer agrees, the iPad is superior to the Xoom and the software is superior to honeycomb. Just get over it. Apple's product.is better.
Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
+1im not a fan of the xoom.. but am very curious to see honeycomb once it matures a lil more.
slickr - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
why would want such a device? You can't put it in your pocket and can't use it to do office work, its not a gaming device, its not for watching movies too small screen yet too big for anything else, so what is the point for this apart from throwing money away for browsing the web on a fat bulky and ugly looking tablet?Gherkin - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Actually it is quite light and elegant. I have had the first iPad for almost a year and it has proven itself to be very useful. I have a feeling that if the iPad 2 were exactly the same as it is but had any other brand on it than Apple, you would be all over it.Apple-hater: Xoom is the greatest, iPad is junk.
Reviewers: iPad is clearly super AND costs less.
Apple-hater: how much is CrApple paying you! Xoom out-specs the iPad!
Reviewer: Benchmarks show the iPad is 4x faster than the Xoom. And costs less.
Apple-hater: yea but the iOS is garbage!
Reviewer: Honeycomb is buggy and feels rushed out before it was ready.
Apple-hater: Who would want a tablet anyway?!
Meanwhile Apple can't make the iPad fast enough to keep up with demand.
Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
many people have been constantly arguing that a tablet such as this in general is useless since the original ipad. what exactly makes them "apple-haters"? many with these opinions own macbooks and iphones.rquick - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Some opinions are meaningful and some are not. When someone says that they do not have a use for a tablet, that is a valid opinion. When someone says that no one has a use for a tablet, that is an invalid opinion that wastes everyone's time. Slickr's comment was useless and meaningless and could possibly indicate he/she is simply out of touch with reality. Another possibility being expressed by Gherkin is that slickr is disappointed that Android and Xoom a not comparing well to current Apple products and is responding by saying tablets have no value anyway so Apple's current success with the iPad2 is meaningless.Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I just don't see how he's a Xoom fanboy.. he's badmouthing tablets in general. Sure, he is a little aggressive about it..and commenting on an ipad post..but he doesn't mention any brands at all.vision33r - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
I know a number of people at my job who use the iPad to read books and they don't care about cameras or dual core. It doesn't improve human reading speed.Gherkin - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Yes, but it does so much more. Have you had your hands on an iPad 2. I have and it is truly impressive. It is so light and thin and everything is smooth, snappy, and slick. It really is an amazing technological achievement.gus6464 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
The pictures of increased graphics performance for iPad 2 optimized games do not do it justice. Dead Space looks and plays fantastic. Got mine yesterday and I have not missed my laptop one bit. I tried out the xoom and the only thing I was impressed with was Chrome on Honeycomb.ra540i - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
So, funny story. My wife took me to Nebraska Furniture Mart in KC for the first time and I must say that it is an amazing store!!! While there I naturally went straight for the electronics dept. and They actually have an Apple store built in!!! So, anyway, my wife was like, "Is the new Ipad here?!?", and I was like yup, but it's sold out. She said that she just wanted to see it. Keep in mind that my wife is rockin a POS sprint flip phone and is technologically r-tarded. So she messed with the ipad 2 for like 3 minutes and was like. "I don't see what all the hype is about." I just laughed at her and we wandered in the opposite direction. Low and behold we ran right into the XOOM. And I was like, oh sh*&!! This is supposed to be the ipad killer, so I let her mess with it first before I got my mitts on it. After about 2 min she was like "WTF?, This sucks!! Who would buy this if the other one is cheaper (ipad)." I said that only true geeks would understand. Then I played with the XOOM for about 5 minutes and I have to say, WTF!!! How is honeycomb even acceptable by anyone's standards at this point? Laggy as hell, and most of all, my wife, a true virgin to this market segment, would choose the ipad over the xoom. In my eyes, with first hand experience, I would choose the Ipad 2 without a heartbeat. Anyone that owns a xoom and brags about it is only trying to justify the cost of the device. Congratulations to everyone who waited to buy the ipad 2 as their first tablet. My wife ENVYS YOU!!!!!!!!!!shiro910 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I'm in the market for a tablet or a ebook reader. I like the instant-on feature and the fact that I can use it around the house and in bed So I was looking at the ipad, ipad2 and xoom. If i didn't read any reviews or researched on the web. Simply based my purchase on how useful the product is from actual usage. Hands down the Apple's Ipad 2 will be the winner. Even the Ipad 1st generation felt much more polish than the Xoom. What idiot would purchase something like the xoom? Even the geeky side of me can not justify buying it at this point. People are in lalaland when they simply look at paper specifications. Give me real world specs please. Forget about the open/close OS and Itune sucks donkey nuts. Honestly, the Xoom felt like a half ass rushed out product so the consumer can be the beta tester...sorry no thanks.One Ipad 2 please.....until something better comes along.
snoozemode - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
And Motorola wants $800 for the Xoom? wow.jabber - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
For years I have been pleading for someone to take note of PowerVR.Shame its been relegated to the iPad but I hope this enables a few folks to wake up and realise that there is a good alternative to brute force rendering.
I have been a fan of the PowerVR tech since the Matrox M3D days from the mid-90s.
Please can we reintroduce this tech into the next generation of PC graphics cards so we can start to reduce power consumption and up efficiency.
The current road we are on for PC graphics isnt the right one. With PowerVR we could maybe get a 6990 capable card with the power consumption of a 5770.
Worth a try surely?
jmcb - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Some Android phones used the PowerVR last year, at least one upcoming Android phone will use it this year too.Some of us Android users are fans of it from last year. I dont know if they will be using this version tho.
Aziz - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
It is a Super Cool Device that I don't need, honestly.Thats not to say I am not tempted, I wouldn't mind if someone if gifted it to me. Too bad none of my family members are reading this.
As far as the Xoom, I will buy one when The xoom is 399 or less.
-Tempting options for the Xoom is native HDMI out although my netbook with HDMI out on integreted intel graphics would hang up alot with trying to stream hd content to my TV so our family could watch hulu content.
-love the honeycomb idea although my android 2.2 device is a bit unpolished
Overall, there is some healthy competition. WHo will be the winners. Would love to invest my money so I can easily afford the devices. Broadcom, apple, or nvda? I have a feeling nvda will lose some of the coolness that it wrapped itself with in the last 2-3 months with tegra2.
edsib1 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Its pointless having all that graphics power anyway.To play games u need BUTTONS - and preferably also a joystick.
I have a psp anyday. I have yet to see a single decent game on a phone (any phone, ever).
I bought Asphalt 5 on Android just to check out a latest game, and its rubbish. in comparison to dedicated portables.
Remember Apple's Ipad has to be competitve for the next 12 months. The next revision of Droids will push the bar higher. Should be thankful for the battle between Droiddom and Apple for pushing tech ever higher.
Juzcallmeneo - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I agree..I've tried lots of games and touchscreen buttons are a pain to use for this department. FPS is probably the worst. I do kind of like the idea of that PSP phone coming out tho.. should be interesting.mrdeez - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
My opinion as well.Ipad=tablet games, basic os
Honeycomb=basic gaming, options galore,power user who likes to tweak it.
I have no plans on gaming with this device only work,web,email, and reading.
vision33r - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Then, the ipad 1 for $349 is the best tablet for you. The cheapest and best hardware at this price level.There are no android tablet at $349 that comes close to the iPad 1 in hardware and build quality.
Every android tab south of $300 has a terrible screen or need reboots every day.
StormyParis - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
looking at the game pictures, the graphics don't actually change the game. a tad more eye candy, that's all. who cares ?pubjoe - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
"Who cares?"Ironically, mostly just the benchmark obsessed, anti-Steve Jobs Résistance.
PeteH - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Are you honestly saying that a drastic improvement in performance is meaningless because developers haven't yet had the chance to write apps that take advantage of it?GnillGnoll - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Motorola Xoom is actually rendering at 1280x752, since the System Bar in Honeycomb is always taking up screen space.LordSojar - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
The comments in this section are a big joke. You've all been owned by corporate marketing strategy and product placement.How about... people buy whatever the hell they want to buy, and you don't comment on their purchase versus your own. That's a novel concept... shutting your mouths and letting others be content with their purchases.
You Apple folk, take your iPad praises elsewhere, you won't convince Android users that your device is better...
In addition, you Android folk, take your iPad bashing elsewhere, you won't convince iOS users that anything aside from an Apple device is better.
Now can the rest of you shut the hell up about the devices? This thread is about the GPU in the SoC, not the device.
Nigra - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
For the people pointing out the resolution difference, it really doesn't say much... but I'm sure you know this already... anyways, read on:I've taken the most favorable benchmark for the xoom (the first one) and made the math:
1024*768@29fps = 22806528 pixels/second
1280*[email protected] = 15462400 pixels/second
So, it's still a much much lower score... and this is optimistic since I'm taking the best benchmark for the xoom... but all of the other benchmarks just worsen it.
Also, take as example how AA on the iPad results much better than no AA on the xoom at all, even when the iPad must render a bigger picture of the scene to fit it on the display later.
kmmatney - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
As others have commented, the XOOM renders at 1280 x 752, since the Honeycomb menu bar is always on the screen, so the best case benchmark for XOOM is slightly lower:1280 * 752 @ 15.1 fps = 14534656 pixels/sec
PeteH - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Are the XOOM benchmark tests unable to remove the menu bar and render full screen?GnillGnoll - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
Android 3.0 ("Honeycomb") applications cannot completely hide the System Bar since it contains the Home/Back/Task Switch buttons which are crucial for using the device. Apps can only enable a "lights out" mode which will dim the System Bar until you touch it, but they can never use the entire screen.PeteH - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
Hmm, that seems odd. Does the "lights out" mode allow for the System Bar to go semi-transparent?MacAtDBB - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Thanks for a great review. Looking at the POWERVR SGX543MP specs I see it supports various modes of GP-GPU including OpenCL. I wonder if Apple are (or will be) exploiting this in the iOS as they seem to be is snow leopard?tipoo - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
They don't actually use OpenCL in Snow Leopard, OpenCL is available for use by developers within Snow Leopard. The two things are distinctly different. I imagine its the same for this.jmcb - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I was never sold on Tegra 2 for battery life alone based on some stuff I read last year. The PowerVR looks like it doesnt wanna be left out of the specs talks. Which is good, cuz it proved last year to be one of the best gpu's in mobile devices along with Tegra 2.Like I said I was leery on Tegra 2 just on battery life.....and based on this article.....I will definitely wait til some other phones with different chips come out.
tzhu07 - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
Trying to convince the other side that they're wrong when it comes to iOS vs Android debates is like trying to convert someone's religion or political affiliation. Plus, let's never forget this graphic:http://johns-jokes.com/afiles/images/arguing_on_th...
spambonk - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
It doesn't make sense that there would be such a difference - isn't it more likely the benchmarking program doesn't use both cores when its doing whatever it is doing.mrdeez - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link
I think you may have something there...this doesn't m ake any sense that the xoom would be so low. Nvidia has been known for graphics, especially open gl. Something tells me that some updates are in order and if this is true and this is the best gaming that the xoom can do then don't buy one if you plan on gaming on it. I for the life of me hate every touchscreen game that I've ever played.video guy - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Beyond H.264 that is accelerated in HW, i am curious to know if anyone has made any benchmarks for other codecs on iPad2 such as VC-1 (Microsoft camp, that will not deliver a tablet any time soon) or WebM (Google camp thta does not seem very strong on Video...). especially with the powervr sgx543mp2 core to accelerate some of the video primitives.metafor - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I think you're vastly overestimating the role of the GPU in codec work. Almost all mobile SoC's have either dedicated fixed-logic for such things or power-efficient DSP's. Very little of the work is actually done on the GPU.PeteH - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
Very true. No one wants to run a power-hungry GPU more often than absolutely necessary.professor78 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
I see alot of this refers to Tegra comparions. This is incorrect.The Xoom is one deice that is currently un-optimised for a set of benchmarking tools. Check out other Tegra devices - even the £250 Advent Vega - It scores about the same, and in some cases MORE than the iPAD 2.
So Tegra and the New A5 chip are about the same.
Maybe Anand shoould run a retaction about Tegra comparisons, or test the iPAD up against a device that is half the price!
GnillGnoll - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
The Advent Vega gets 20.8 fps in GLBenchmark 2.0 Egypt and 43.8 fps in GLBenchmark 2.0 Pro (see http://www.glbenchmark.com/phonedetails.jsp?benchm... ).iPad 2 gets 44/57.6 fps while rendering 28% more pixels. That's in no way "about the same".
spin26 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
good job apple for making the tablet space competitivei hope prices will go down faster than expected.
NVIDIA is a graphics company, im pretty sure it can catch up on this performance gap.
Android 3.0 is a version 0 release, optimizations can come just like it did on version 2, by that it can minimize the gap on performance. the Xoom is a great tablet, it just need to be priced reasonable to compete here as it no longer deserves the premium its asking for, ipad 2 is better in many ways.
joeldm - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
. . . here in Atlanta I'm seeing iPads everywhere. Parents using them while at their kids' soccer games, at the dojo where I've seen a number of parents and practitioners using them, at the Atlanta airport there were at every gate and in Albuquerque's airport when I flew into there and yes, at Starbucks and other, less well-known coffee shops around town.They don't sell 14 million iPads and "no-one has them". The smell of "I hate Apple" fanboies is getting ripe on this list . . . . I don't have one yet, but I will be buying an iPad2. I have three kids in school and one in college, the device is just too darned useful in an educational setting to ignore. And that's where some crazy growth is going to come, in education.
So all you anti-Apple whiners, it must suck being you these days, eh? ; - )
JoeL
LaughingTarget - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
14 million is remarkably small, actually, compared to just the total tablet PC market. The reason most of us don't see them very often is most of us aren't regularly in light use markets. I spend a lot of time in office environments and manufacturing floors, not children's soccer fields. There isn't a single iPad in these places because they don't do any good there. We do have tablet PCs though, because we can actually put programs on them that do what we need, something Apple is grossly deficient in.DesktopMan - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Any plans for video playback tests? At minimum avi and mkv containers, divx/xvid and h264 codecs. For h264 720p and 1080p at main and high profile, seeing as how the Tegra 2 "no high profile"-debacle needs some closure.PeteH - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I seriously doubt that video playback uses the GPU in either the Tegra 2 or the A5.TakeToTask - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Lots of valid points, but as usual, the main points are missed by techies who have a "god complex" about their knowledge of the computer industry and hardware.Android is, at best, good for techies. It's not refined for the general population, many of whom *still* don't have a grasp on technology as a whole. Don't believe me? Go do help desk for a month and come back. Sticking with my accusation of "god complex," the techie will push Android on their relatives so they can look like the savior when things go wrong. This is not to say that there aren't problems that arise on the iOS from time to time, but already, malware is making the rounds on Android. It's ok. "God person" will come to the rescue.
For all the techies who ripped Apple for not originally coming with a 2-button mouse, I'll show you people who:
* didn't know the right button did something different
* didn't know they had to use the left button to select something from the context menu
* didn't know if double-clicking meant "left double-clicking" or "right double-clicking"
.
.
.
etc. This was in 2010.
The iPad (2) offers a simple experience for the regular person and offers far more to the TRUE hackers who know how to unlock the device and make it do what they want anyway.
Bash away, but from what I can tell, techies have no *valid* argument against my post...
LaughingTarget - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I'm not a techie, I'm a business person, and the iPad2 is still lightyears away from anything worth getting. The system is so hobbled that I can't do anything with it that Apple doesn't deign give me permission to do, first. I can't tie it into any of my business systems. It's useless for me. It's an expensive and underfunctional Netbook.If I was only in the market for checking e-mails, playing games, and engaging in limited web browing, the iPad2 would be just fine. But I actually want it to do more than that. How fast the processor is at rendering 3D games is meaningless to me. I have a home PC and a travel laptop that does far more in that department. What good is all that power if it doesn't do what I want it to do? The iPad2 is a Maserati in a school zone. It looks nice, but it's all wasted effort.
Android isn't just a techie system, it's positioning itself to take on the business world, where the major profits are. Until Apple can do that, which includes not locking the system down and funneling everything through their store, they will remain an overall bit player that strangely get a lot of media attention relative to their size and market presence.
PeteH - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
I would argue that the major profits in personal computing hardware are actually in the consumer space. Deutsche Bank published a study claiming that Apple commands 35% of the total PC market operating profits on just 7% of total revenues, and I'm pretty sure consumers make up the bulk of Apple's sales. I don't see why the tablet space would be any different.retnuh - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link
LOL, this makes me laugh. First since this is a business use, signup for the iOS Developer Enterprise Program, second code up and deploy WHATEVER YOU WANT TO INTERNALLY. Now if you only care about your own needs a single regular iOS Developer Program subscription will do fine and allow you to install any app you've written to tie into your business systems as needed. Oh and the apps don't have to go through the App Store (since its internal and you wouldn't be selling them anyways), been like this since app development started.Next solution, do your business systems not have a html interface? Any kind of easy to tie into API? I mean seriously, you could create a webapp for internal use and then use whatever tablet/netbook/etc... you wanted.
vision33r - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link
That's why you have an IT dept for a non-tech like you. You shouldn't be poking around and connect to business systems without configuration from IT.Android just gives you open access but IT will still need to due diligence and lock it down to prevent tampering and idiot proof it.
wallet99 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
ipad2 is awesome, double the speed, nice! but too expensive, right? well there is a way to get 400 dollars a week for 20 dollars a month, yes. check is out 400aweek.com Join 180,000+ members. this is revolutionary!dcnarad - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
I understand that there is a difference in performance due the resolution of the screen, so pulled up G-tablet specs (screen resolution slightly lower than ipad2) on GLbenchmark http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=g...looks like the cheap tab matches and in some cases outperforms the ipad2. It it true or am I interpreting it all wrong.
Sherpak - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link
You are comparing it to a first gen iPad, not an iPad 2Ramshambo2001 - Thursday, March 17, 2011 - link
Wholly Crap I will be able to play Angry Birds at like 2200 FPS!!!!!giridhart - Friday, March 18, 2011 - link
http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=g...With Exynos platform reference design.
samirsshah - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
and nothing less...androideatsapples - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
ok this is like comparing ferrarie enzo to a mitsubishi lancer evo or like comparing a sport atv to a sport utility atv,.... sure look at the ferrari .. itll kill the lancer in a race but overall mitsubishi is better. better for overall situations, you dont see someone driving an enzo on rough roads.... its been built for a specific use....sport quad = built for speed cant go everywhere with it. Sure its fun but you dont have versatily of a sport utlity.. sport utility you can do everything a sport quad can and more!
where am i going with this? the ferrari enzo and the sport quad are just like the ipads.... they do good in one field.... Xoom is good at everything. The reason apple rates so high... it has nothing with high cpu to run, no bonus features or anything. Comparing Apple os to honeycomb phones are jokes!
The Honeycomb might rate lower but it is much better than Apple, much more versatile!( sport utility / lancer evo)
Xoom kills ipad 2 ipad = gaming Xoom = EVERYTHING
fuzzy1969 - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
its not all about triangles and fill rates, nvidias background is with desktop gfx cards. anti alaising, shadows etc and extra fx i suspect the powervr would struggle with stuff like that (cpu work) lets compare some tegra 2 optimised stuff with the powervr cpu/gpu working overtime. from what ive seen the ipad2 runs well but the tegra 2 games have more of a destop feel.http://unigine.com/press-releases/110214-android/
fuzzy1969 - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
im glad powervr are doing it again but ive got a sneaky feeling that the tegra 2 been based on a desktop gpu rather than just a polygon shifter has a few tricks up its sleeve and it seems they might be the SoC of choice for android (which is a shame cos samsungs exynos beats the a5 in polygon shifting). Demo's of the tegra3 are going around and it look impressive with dynamic lighting and stuff.ninjamik - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
so what earlier posts mentioned earlier about bias testing was correct.if you look over at pc mag www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381767,00.asp
a more thorough test of the tegra 2 and A5&4 was done proving the moterola xoom (tegra 2)
creamed the Ipad2 (a5) in two out of 3 tests. admittedly Ipad2 it did win this one!!!
so which is better now?
and android also just announced wireless HD video streaming to any tv with a hdmi dongle,
the partys definitely heating up!
ninjamik - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
oh and excuse the second earlier and correct Motorola! it is 4am ;)