Google Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 Performance Preview

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• cosminmcm - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link

  Here:
  http://www.anandtech.com/show/6426/ipad-4-gpu-perf...

• doobydoo - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link

  'That's not quite true.
  The Exynos 5 according to this test is now king of the hill in the Egypt HD Offscreen test.'
  
  Um, no.
  
  There are lots of offscreen tests, two Egypt ones. The Exynos 5 powering a TABLET loses to the iPhone 5 (a smartphone) in all but one of the off screen tests, including an Egypt Classic Off-Screen test.
  
  Then there's the iPad 4 which Apple claimed doubles graphics performance. It wont even be close.

• Pipperox - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link

  The Egypt tests are the only "game like" tests where an actual scene is being rendered.
  
  The others are synthetic tests which as I said have been long abandoned in the PC industry due to being meaningless, unreliable and prone to cheating (the older guys will certainly remember the early days of NVidia VS 3Dfx :)
  
  Of the 2 Egypt tests, the "Classic" is representative of games and graphic complexity of 1-2 year ago, while the HD indicates what's coming next year.
  
  And yes Exynos 5 is powering a tablet now, but will trickle into smartphones in the coming months, for sure will be in the SGS 4.

• doobydoo - Saturday, November 3, 2012 - link

  So firstly you believe that you know better than Anandtech and you can decide that you're only going to listen to the 1 out of 10 or so benchmarks in which the product you clearly support barely comes out on top.
  
  Then, you're going to claim that the same clock speed and performance will be found in smartphones, despite the atrocious battery life of this in tablet form.
  
  And finally, you're just going to stick your fingers in your ears and shout 'la la la' because you didn't want to hear the fact that the already-out iPad will surpass this in performance by a long way.
  
  You sound balanced.

• Pipperox - Saturday, November 3, 2012 - link

  First off: i do not support any product.
  
  Second: It's not that I didn't want to hear about the iPad 4 performance, i just hadn't seen any review out at the time i was writing. Now i did.
  
  Third: you're free to believe whoever you want, but I do not need to believe to Anand, although i generally consider it a reputable site. As a computer engineer with enough specific knowledge on such matters, i believe i understand enough to form my own opinion.
  Benchmarks for mobile phones and tablets are in the stone age.
  Several "reputable" tech websites have been posting Quadrant scores for years to compare phones performance.
  Should I believe those?
  I've personally witnessed Quadrant scores being increased by factor 2.5x on the SAME DEVICE, with minor tweaks on a custom rom.
  Tweaks which did not yield ANY tangible improvement in any other application.
  
  Browser based benchmarks: well they're just that, BROWSER benchmarks.
  On my device if I test 3 different browsers, i get Sunspider and Browsermark scores which range anything between 50% and 100% (the latter being the "fastest" browser).
  Chrome is NOT the fastest browser, btw.
  
  GLBenchmark: out of all those tests, only 2 actually render a game like scene. Those are Egypt HD and Classic. Then these are divide between "normal" and Offscreen scores.
  Only Offscreen scores are run at the same resolution on all devices, so they're the only ones which can be used to compare GPU performance.
  Bit IF you want to compare *per DEVICE* framerates, then off course resolution is relevant and you should look at the "on screen" scores.
  
  Finally the other tests from GLBenchmark like Fillrate and Triangle throughput: when you want to buy a PC graphic card, do you base your purchase on 3DMark scores, or on a dozen GAMES average fps scores, games which the *reputable* tech sites update on a yearly basis?
  
  The PC industry has moved on from synthetic benchmarks.. 10 to 15 years ago.
  Before we had things like, NVidia's Riva 128 beating 3Dfx in synthetic benchmarks, and then people scratching their head when their games were not running as smoothly as on their friends' 3DFx.
  
  Fourth: a quad core Snapdragon Pro, running more slowly than its dual core sibling (which has also a lesser GPU), and slower than its IDENTICAL TWIN sold under another name (LG), doesn't sound right to me and makes me think that there were issues during the test (either of HW, SW or methodology nature).
  
  But you're free to believe what you want.

• dyc4ha - Saturday, November 3, 2012 - link

  +over 9000

• UpSpin - Saturday, November 3, 2012 - link

  I hope others read this valuable post, too. Well said, great.

• doobydoo - Sunday, November 4, 2012 - link

  'First off: i do not support any product.'
  
  Easy to claim. Your comment suggests otherwise.
  
  'Second: It's not that I didn't want to hear about the iPad 4 performance, i just hadn't seen any review out at the time i was writing. Now i did.'
  
  But we knew it would represent a significant increase over the iPad 3 (based on Apples 2x performance claim) which only lost out to a tablet you claimed is the undisputed king of tablet performance by a small margin in 1 of 10 tests.
  
  'Benchmarks for mobile phones and tablets are in the stone age.
  Several "reputable" tech websites have been posting Quadrant scores for years to compare phones performance.
  Should I believe those?'
  
  If they post Quadrant scores, they aren't reputable.
  
  GL benchmarks are different, and a great indicator.
  
  'Browser based benchmarks: well they're just that, BROWSER benchmarks.
  On my device if I test 3 different browsers, i get Sunspider and Browsermark scores which range anything between 50% and 100% (the latter being the "fastest" browser).
  Chrome is NOT the fastest browser, btw.'
  
  Nothing I said was about browser benchmarks. And take any of the browsers you like, they all come out slower than even the iPhone 5.
  
  'GLBenchmark: out of all those tests, only 2 actually render a game like scene. Those are Egypt HD and Classic. Then these are divide between "normal" and Offscreen scores.
  Only Offscreen scores are run at the same resolution on all devices, so they're the only ones which can be used to compare GPU performance.'
  
  The reason there are different tests is that different games can put different demands on each aspect of the GPU, such as the Fill test. Thus, one single game running a 'game like scene' is not representative of all, and this is also why the other benchmarks are equally important.
  
  ' or on a dozen GAMES average fps scores, games which the *reputable* tech sites update on a yearly basis?'
  
  Where do I see a dozen game FPS scores? And are the games at the same resolution and quality? FPS isn't the only measure of performance. Same FPS at higher quality is a better user experience.
  
  'Before we had things like, NVidia's Riva 128 beating 3Dfx in synthetic benchmarks, and then people scratching their head when their games were not running as smoothly as on their friends' 3DFx.'
  
  Talking about old benchmarks not being representative says nothing about newer benchmarks.
  
  'Fourth: a quad core Snapdragon Pro, running more slowly than its dual core sibling (which has also a lesser GPU), and slower than its IDENTICAL TWIN sold under another name (LG), doesn't sound right to me and makes me think that there were issues during the test (either of HW, SW or methodology nature).'
  
  And even the 'Identical twin' in the Chromebook is different again. So either you've got 2 defective devices there or my point is correct that just because they use the same architecture doesn't equal the same performance.

• Pipperox - Sunday, November 4, 2012 - link

  "But we knew it would represent a significant increase over the iPad 3 (based on Apples 2x performance claim) "
  
  So just because Apple claimed a 2x performance
  increase, we should have blindly believed them?
  Finally you show your bias...
  (as for me, NOW THAT I'VE SEEN TESTS of the iPad 4, I have no problem calling it King of the Hill of GPU performance).
  
  "If they post Quadrant scores, they aren't reputable.
  GL benchmarks are different, and a great indicator."
  Says who?
  On what are you basing such claims?
  A benchmark made by.. Kishonti Informatics, based in.. Budapest?
  Who are they?
  I could code an OpenGL benchmark as well.
  It's not like it was a cross industry independent committee which developed such a benchmark, like, i don't know, the SPEC Consortium?
  
  "The reason there are different tests is that different games can put different demands on each aspect of the GPU, such as the Fill test. Thus, one single game running a 'game like scene' is not representative of all, and this is also why the other benchmarks are equally important."
  NO, if you knew how one of such tests was implemented, or had any idea of how to write one, you'd know that such synthetic benchmarks stress ONE SINGLE aspect in isolation, creating totally unrealistic conditions.
  For example, fill rate tests have an incredibly low number of polygons, and poly throughput tests have 1 pixel large triangles.
  And none use complex shaders.
  One architecture can do great in synthetic tests, but for example not having enough bandwidth for keeping up with the same performance once you turn on all the bells and whistles.
  This has been proven over and over again in the past, and it is proven here by the Egypt scene.
  
  And mind you, i'm not even advocating the Egypt benchmark to be reliable, it's just a little bit less unrealistic and meaningless as the others.
  
  "Where do I see a dozen game FPS scores? And are the games at the same resolution and quality? FPS isn't the only measure of performance. Same FPS at higher quality is a better user experience."
  Open any PC graphic card review on Anandtech or reputable competing sites.
  And yes FPS is not the only measure of perfomance, but since you cannot change quality settings on mobile phone games, the quality argument doesn't hold candle here.
  
  "And even the 'Identical twin' in the Chromebook is different again. So either you've got 2 defective devices there or my point is correct that just because they use the same architecture doesn't equal the same performance. "
  
  The Chromebook runs a DIFFERENT OS!
  And a different SW stack!
  That makes the difference!
  But the LG Optimus G and the Google Nexus 4 ARE THE SAME PHONE on the SAME OS!
  With the difference of phone storage size and SD Card slot.
  And minor SW customizations.
  There is no point about "same architecture", here we're talking about the exact same CPU!
  
  So if the Google Nexus 4 can't complete any benchmark without clock throttling, you cannot post numbers scored while throttling, it doesn't make any sense!
  And does numbers will never be repeatable, depending on current temperature of the room, battery status, previously run sw, etc!
  If a device cannot complete a single run of a 3 minute benchmark without thermal throttling, that device is defective!
  So either you got a lemon, and then you should return it to the manufacturer or do further investigation.
  Or that device has a major manufacturing flaw, it should be announced and do everything so that it is recalled.
  Because nobody should buy a device which cannot run a 3min benchmark without throttling.

• De_Com - Monday, November 5, 2012 - link

  Excellent Post Pipper !!
  Very informative and very well detailed.
  
  Nice to see someone not just taking the benchmarks as the be all and end all of a device choice.