iPhone 4S Preliminary Benchmarks: ~800MHz A5, Slightly Slower GPU than iPad 2, Still Very Fast
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on October 11, 2011 3:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone 4S
- SoCs
Apple's ability to control the entire information chain, down to the point of limiting leaks, appears to be gradually slipping as it grows as a company. Case in point are the numerous hardware and performance leaks surrounding the newly launched iPhone 4S. Little did we know that several weeks ago we were staring at photos of the 4S' PCB, and more recently we've seen the first performance results from Apple's first A5 based smartphone thanks to a few eager users around the web. We've compiled these results here from various sources (all linked below) and compared them to our existing database of tests.
The results are pretty much as expected. Javascript performance finally catches up to Tegra 2 based Honeycomb devices, while general CPU performance is significantly higher than the iPhone 4. I suspect Ice Cream Sandwich will bridge the Android smartphone gap (the Honeycomb equipped Gtab 8.9 is here to give you an idea of where a more modern Android browser ends up).
Keep in mind that all of these tests measure performance of the software stack in addition to the hardware. In particular the web browser tests depend largely on browser optimizations, which is why we see differences between similar hardware running different browser versions. Also note that all results were run at stock, with the stock browser. Finally, although these browser tests were captured on video we'll still be running our official tests once our 4Ses arrive and will update accordingly.
Using some of the integer and fp tests of published Geekbench scores we can already conclude that Apple is shipping a lower clocked A5 in the iPhone 4S than it does in the iPad 2. This naturally makes sense as the iPhone 4S has a much smaller 5.25 Whr battery. Based on the Geekbench results it looks like the iPad 2 is clocked around 25% higher than the iPhone 4S, pegging the latter's clock speed at 800MHz.
A lower clock not only means higher yields from the factory, but likely a lower operating voltage as well. Dropping a CPU's core voltage, yields a greater-than-linear decrease in power consumption, making the marginal loss in clock speed a good choice. At a lower operating frequency than its Android competitors, Apple does have to exploit its strengths in software to avoid any tangible performance penalties. Apple has traditionally done this very well in the past, so I don't expect the loss of frequency to be a huge deal to the few who do cross-shop iOS and Android.
Unsurprisingly, memory bandwidth doesn't appear to have gone up either compared to the iPad 2's A5 (taking into account scaling due to CPU clock increases). The Samsung part number on the iPad 2's A5 indicates two LPDDR2-800 die on package, it's safe to assume that whatever Apple clocked the memory interface at in the iPad 2 remains unchanged in the iPhone 4S.
The GPU results tell a similar story courtesy of some early GLBenchmark 2.1 results. The 960 x 640 results are useless as they are bound by vsync at ~60 fps. Luckly GLBenchmark 2.1 added an off-screen render mode at 1280 x 720 where we can really see the differences between the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S A5 implementations:
Here the iPad 2 holds a ~21% performance advantage, which once again I assume to be all related to clock speed. Also note the huge advantage over the existing iPhone 4. The GPU power in the 4S should be more than enough to run any well written, current generation title at well north of 30 fps on its display.
We'll be reviewing the iPhone 4S in the coming weeks, stay tuned!
Source: GLBenchmark Database, Geekbench Database, Macrumors
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Swapzzz - Thursday, October 13, 2011 - link
lol .... You have no clue what your are talking about you NOOB ! My phone can kick any "IPHONE" in the market Oh guess what ... My phone can be overclocked .... can your be ? ummmm,..... NO!So think before you speak of what you donot know .
lurker22 - Sunday, October 16, 2011 - link
Wow, you sounds like a 8 year old. Did you really write, "my phone can kick your iphone" ?Get a life. It's just a smart phone.
jwcalla - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Is it wrong of me to be skeptical of these benchmarks that show the 4S being a zillion times faster than any other phone on the market?uhuznaa - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
We should wait a few days for the thing being delivered and reviewed before fighting about that.Still, the iPad 2 also is faster than any other tablet on the market. I wouldn't be much surprised to see the 4S being quite fast also. And of course Android 2.x only utilizing one core anyway explains a lot of this. Ice Cream Sandwich should change this sooner or later.
Lucian Armasu - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Faster at what? graphics performance? You don't use that for most things. You use CPU performance, and that's about equal. If there's a difference in browser performance, then that's all software.I really hope Anand and Brian clear this up when they do the iPhone 4S review. They've started a wave of misinformation on the Internet because now everyone thinks that because of that JS test, the dual core 800 Mhz A5 CPU is twice as fast as the dual core 1.2 Ghz Exynos, when it couldn't be further from the truth. They are both Cortex A9, plain and simple, and the Exynos is clocked 50% higher so it should be 50% faster. If that doesn't translate into benchmarks, then the difference is coming only from the browsers being used.
So if they really wanted to check CPU performance, they should've used other browsers, and not compare a brand new iOS browser with what is basically a 18 months old stock Android browser, that doesn't even use both cores. I can't believe the amount of misinformation this has created online. It's huge, and it's a shame, because it's not the real truth.
uhuznaa - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Come on, the dualcore PowerVR GPU in the A5 just wipes the floor with everything you get in other smartphones currently. And in iOS all (or most) of the UI runs on it. It's fairly obvious that this iPhone will be fast, very much as the iPad 2 with the A5 is fast.And yes, the CPU won't be faster than others, even slower due to running only with 800 MHz. It's just that currently with Android 2.x on Android phones these are not as fast as they could in the browser since the OS basically has the browser only run on one core.
God, can we have a reasonable discussion here, please? The 4S won't be twice as fast as the SGS2 (at least not as soon as it gets ICS), but it also won't be slower with all that GPU power.
00DC2TW - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
yeah all software, which clearly proves the point that specs don't matter, and the consumers don't care about specs, if you optimize your software, your hardware specs can be lower, which in turn saves money and reduces power consumptionWaltFrench - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
“Faster at what? graphics performance? You don't use that for most things.”Yes, absolutely true: graphics performance only matters on the *ONLY* thing that's actually very performance-sensitive on modern smartphones, hi-res games.
Of course, AnandTech readers occasionally like to play games on their various devices, no?
I'd say Apple has a triple advantage on that: (1) the A5's GPU hardware looks pretty fine against what else we see today; (2) Apple has a couple years' advantage in optimizing their core graphics libraries for particular GPU designs; and (3) Apple game developers don't have the performance penalty of dealing with java, even JITted java and its garbage collection.
You could look at other real-world issues such as Android fragmentation — developing hi-res games is especially sensitive to screen dimensions — and monetization issues, too, but while that's a big deal about the actual user experience with getting and enjoying good games, it's not actually Anand's focus. It DOES, however, reinforce your point that today, Apple has a very sweet *combination* of hardware and software, and just the next release of Android is not likely to address the issue.
Swapzzz - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
"I'd say Apple has a triple advantage on that: (1) the A5's GPU hardware looks pretty fine against what else we see today; (2) Apple has a couple years' advantage in optimizing their core graphics libraries for particular GPU designs; and (3) Apple game developers don't have the performance penalty of dealing with java, even JITted java and its garbage collection."HAHAHAHAHAHA !!! OMG i cant stop Laughing.
Wake Up !!!
tipoo - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Not really. Android is built for a wide variety of hardware, so unlike Apple they can't make a full out push for dual core optimization exactly when the hardware is available, so the software lags a bit. Plenty of dual core Android phones, but the browser probably isn't using the second core since most Android devices are still single core. And improvements like this in browser scores through software updates are hardly unheard of, the iphone 4 used to get above 10,000MS in Sunspider, as did phones like the Nexus S but that changed with optimization. We'll see if ICS makes better use of multicore.