Apple iPad 2 GPU Performance Explored: PowerVR SGX543MP2 Benchmarked
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 12, 2011 3:04 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- iPad
- GLBenchmark
- iPad 2
- Mobile
- Tablets
Earlier this morning we published our first impressions on Apple's iPad 2, including analysis on camera quality and a dive into the architecture behind Apple's A5 SoC. Our SoC investigation mostly focused on CPU performance, which we found to be a healthy 50% faster than the A4 in the original iPad - at least in web browsing. We were able to exceed Apple's claim of up to 2x performance increase in some synthetic tests, but even a 50% increase in javascript and web page loading performance isn't anything to be upset about. We briefly touched on the GPU: Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX 543MP2. Here Apple is promising up to a 9x increase in performance, but it's something we wanted to investigate.
Architecturally the 543MP2 has more than twice the compute horsepower of the SGX 535 used in Apple's A4. Each shader pipeline can execute twice the number of instructions per clock as the SGX 535, and then there are four times as many pipes in an SGX 543MP2 as there are in a 535. There are also efficiency improvements as well. Hidden surface removal works at twice the rate in the 543MP2 as it did in the 535. There's also a big boost in texture filtering performance as you'll see below.
As always we turn to GLBenchmark 2.0, a benchmark crafted by a bunch of developers who either have or had experience doing development work for some of the big dev houses in the industry. We'll start with some of the synthetics.
Over the course of PC gaming evolution we noticed a significant increase in geometry complexity. We'll likely see a similar evolution with games in the ultra mobile space, and as a result this next round of ultra mobile GPUs will seriously ramp up geometry performance.
Here we look at two different geometry tests amounting to the (almost) best and worst case triangle throughput measured by GLBenchmark 2.0. First we have the best case scenario - a textured triangle:
The original iPad could manage 8.7 million triangles per second in this test. The iPad 2? 29 million. An increase of over 3x. Developers with existing titles on the iPad could conceivably triple geometry complexity with no impact on performance on the iPad 2.
Now for the more complex case - a fragment lit triangle test:
The performance gap widens. While the PowerVR SGX 535 in the A4 could barely break 4 million triangles per second in this test, the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 in the A5 manages just under 20 million. There's just no competition here.
I mentioned an improvement in texturing performance earlier. The GLBenchmark texture fetch test puts numbers to that statement:
We're talking about nearly a 5x increase in texture fetch performance. This has to be due to more than an increase in the amount of texturing hardware. An improvement in throughput? Increase in memory bandwidth? It's tough to say without knowing more at this point.
| Apple iPad vs. iPad 2 | ||||
| Apple iPad (PowerVR SGX 535) | Apple iPad 2 (PowerVR SGX 543MP2) | |||
| Array test - uniform array access |
3412.4 kVertex/s
|
3864.0 kVertex/s
|
||
| Branching test - balanced |
2002.2 kShaders/s
|
11412.4 kShaders/s
|
||
| Branching test - fragment weighted |
5784.3 kFragments/s
|
22402.6kFragments/s
|
||
| Branching test - vertex weighted |
3905.9 kVertex/s
|
3870.6 kVertex/s
|
||
| Common test - balanced |
1025.3 kShaders/s
|
4092.5 kShaders/s
|
||
| Common test - fragment weighted |
1603.7 kFragments/s
|
3708.2 kFragments/s
|
||
| Common test - vertex weighted |
1516.6 kVertex/s
|
3714.0 kVertex/s
|
||
| Geometric test - balanced |
1276.2 kShaders/s
|
6238.4 kShaders/s
|
||
| Geometric test - fragment weighted |
2000.6 kFragments/s
|
6382.0 kFragments/s
|
||
| Geometric test - vertex weighted |
1921.5 kVertex/s
|
3780.9 kVertex/s
|
||
| Exponential test - balanced |
2013.2 kShaders/s
|
11758.0 kShaders/s
|
||
| Exponential test - fragment weighted |
3632.3 kFragments/s
|
11151.8 kFragments/s
|
||
| Exponential test - vertex weighted |
3118.1 kVertex/s
|
3634.1 kVertex/s
|
||
| Fill test - texture fetch |
179116.2 kTexels/s
|
890077.6 kTexels/s
|
||
| For loop test - balanced |
1295.1 kShaders/s
|
3719.1 kShaders/s
|
||
| For loop test - fragment weighted |
1777.3 kFragments/s
|
6182.8 kFragments/s
|
||
| For loop test - vertex weighted |
1418.3 kVertex/s
|
3813.5 kVertex/s
|
||
| Triangle test - textured |
8691.5 kTriangles/s
|
29019.9 kTriangles/s
|
||
| Triangle test - textured, fragment lit |
4084.9 kTriangles/s
|
19695.8 kTriangles/s
|
||
| Triangle test - textured, vertex lit |
6912.4 kTriangles/s
|
20907.1 kTriangles/s
|
||
| Triangle test - white |
9621.7 kTriangles/s
|
29771.1 kTriangles/s
|
||
| Trigonometric test - balanced |
1292.6 kShaders/s
|
3249.9 kShaders/s
|
||
| Trigonometric test - fragment weighted |
1103.9 kFragments/s
|
3502.5 kFragments/s
|
||
| Trigonometric test - vertex weighted |
1018.8 kVertex/s
|
3091.7 kVertex/s
|
||
| Swapbuffer Speed |
600
|
599
|
||
Enough with the synthetics - how much of an improvement does all of this yield in the actual GLBenchmark 2.0 game tests? Oh it's big.
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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?