ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime & NVIDIA Tegra 3 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 1, 2011 1:00 AM ESTCamera Quality
Over the past couple of years of reviewing ARM based tablets, I've really never wanted to use any of them to take photos with. I see it happen from time to time and I can definitely see the use when making video calls, but otherwise it's just not that big of a deal to me. I use my smartphone far more frequently to take photos. Despite this being the case, ASUS has improved image quality out of both the front and rear-facing cameras in the Prime.
The rear sensor is now 8MP while the front is 1.2MP. I didn't have too much time to do a deep investigation here, but capture quality is much improved over the original Transformer:
TF Original, Rear Camera
TF Prime, Rear Camera
The rear camera shoots stills at 3264 x 2448 and produces JPGs that are typically around 2.4MB in size. The time between the first tap and capture of a still is under 2 seconds. The rear sensor can shoot 1080p video as well.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Thank you, I appreciate the kind words :)Take care,
Anand
cotak - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Everyone seems so impressed but for me the big elephant is why is the GPU slower than the ipad2's from a GPU company? And to boot the CPU performance isn't significantly faster either? What's going on?Death666Angel - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
CPU is pretty fast when you look at multi-core enabled Linpack. Other programs probably don't handle the 4 cores very efficiently.As for the GPU, Apple has been very aggressive in marketing iOS (specifically the iPads) as mobile consoles, so they really delivered in the GPU department. The downside of that is that the die size of the A5 is 122mm² according to Anand (4s review), whereas Tegra3 even with 5 CPU cores only has 80mm² (Tegra3 launched article). :-)
thunng8 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Not sure if they are equivalent tests, but in the ipad2 review, ipad2 scored 170.9 MFLOP which is higher than the Transformer Prime's score of 135.9.I don't think the average consumer cares about how big the die size is, they will however notice the extra GPU performance.
Also, even with the bigger dies size, it doesn't seem to affected battery life either.
Blaster1618 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
GPU:Power VR SGX 543MP2 (iPAD 2) 60 nm
8 Pixel processor * maximum 4 separate address per vector per cycle= 32 addresses per cycle.
Tegra 3 40 nm
12 Pixel processors x 1 separate address per vector=12 addresses per cycle.
Isn't there a secret slot where you can slip in a NV104 processor and give this story a happy ending. Last time I bought an apple was a Apple IIc. (google it), but in this case power's simultaneous multi-threading beats the brawn of 12 processors. (darn). maybe wayne will get smart and 28nm.
vision33r - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
There's nothing to be impressed with. It's another poor attempt by Nvidia to rush a product out the door and getting their ass handed by the iPad2's higher optimized design.How embarrassing to let a 1GHZ dualcore SOC spank a 1.4GHZ quadcore Tegra 3.
I don't know people are excited especially that from what we know of the upcoming Apple's A6 designs and iPad 3 will make this thing forgotten very soon.
GmanMD - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Any idea as to whether you would be able to hook up a 4g wireless usb modem to the dock on this? It would be awesome to have that flexibility.medi01 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
I hope one day Anand would stop judging screens only on min/max brightness and would do a proper test, that would also compare gamut.Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
That day will come very soon... ;)Take care,
Anand
Toadster - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
how do the these stack up against each other?