Google Nexus 9: Preliminary Findings
by Joshua Ho on November 3, 2014 1:00 PM ESTCPU Performance
While there’s a great deal of ground to cover on the tablet as a whole, one of the most interesting aspects of the Nexus 9 is the SoC. While we’ve tested Tegra K1 before, we were looking at the more traditional Cortex A15 variant. The Denver variant (Tegra13x) is mostly similar to Tegra K1-32 (Tegra12x), but instead the CPU cores are a radically different design. In order to get an idea for how this translates into real world we can look at a few of our standard benchmarks in this area, although Google Octane couldn’t complete a full run. This build of Android clearly has AArch64 active, which means that we should be able to directly compare the Nexus 9 to the iPad Air 2 for performance.
As one can see, at least at this stage in development the Nexus 9 can show some level of promise at times, but can be a bit disappointing in others. In SunSpider, Denver is generally even slower than Krait. However, in a benchmark like Kraken the Nexus 9 easily pulls ahead to take the top spot. In Basemark OS II the Nexus 9 does well overall but this seems to be due to its graphics performance/GPU performance and storage performance rather than CPU-bound tests like the system and web tests. It seems that when the code morphing systems works as expected, Denver can deliver significant amounts of performance. However, when such code morphing falls flat its true performance with a dual core, 2.3 GHz configuration is around that of a four Krait core CPU system at similar clock speeds. Once again, it's important to emphasize that this build is far from complete so performance should improve across the board with launch software. The fact that Tegra13x can approach A8X in CPU performance in some tests is definitely interesting to see.
Battery Life
While Denver's performance is a bit mixed, it's worth taking a look at battery life to see how Denver performs in these areas. As always, our battery life tests are all run with the display calibrated to 200 nits.
While an early build, it seems that the Nexus 9 is reasonably competitive in battery life but I'm not sure that these results are perfectly accurate. At any rate, efficiency at this stage seems to be par for the course, which should bode well for shipping software. This is a mostly display-bound test though, so we'll look at Basemark OS II to get a better idea for compute-bound battery life.
As one can see, while the battery life of the Nexus 9 ends up on the bottom for phablets and tablets, the overall performance during the test is quite high. We're working on a better comparison for the final review, but this should give a good idea of what to expect in general.
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konondrum - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
I think Google's point is that everyone has a slightly different idea of an ideal size. That's why they didn't make a nexus 7 (2014) this time.I bought an LG G2 last year because I wanted a screen big enough do some actual reading on without the size of a Note. But now that I've got a Shield Tablet, I'm seriously thinking about getting a smaller phone. The G2 isn't bulky in my pocket, it's just a hair too big to be used comfortably as a phone.
probedb - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
Why do sites like anand insist on publishing pre-reviews like this? dpreview is the same for cameras, several first impressions/almost there but not quite complete/final view type things.Why don't you wait until you have release software? No-one is going to be using the pre-release build used in this review so why review it?
I normally appreciate Anandtech reviews and it's the first place I go to but this sort of thing is just annoying.
OrphanageExplosion - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
Joshua, please read Futuremark's comments on Apple's CPU architecture and why 3DMark Physics (which is a CPU test and perhaps should be in the CPU benchmark section?) performs relatively badly on Cyclone CPU cores: http://www.futuremark.com/pressreleases/understand...My guess is that Denver has similar limitations - it's exceptionally good at certain types of task (ie the simple tests found in typical benchmark scenarios) but isn't as capable on other tasks. Or maybe drop Futuremark's a line for further information? Based on the in-depth Cyclone analysis I just linked to, I am sure they will be happy to clarify Denver's disappointing performance in their benchmark.
DBissett - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
The text suffers from a great deal of awkward and even contradictory wording to the point that it detracts from the content. Hopefully an editor will work harder on the full review.cjs150 - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
I have a simple rule. No MicroSD slot means no purchase. There is a fixation shared by most tablet designers that everything is in the cloud and therefore there is no need for a decent amount of storage space.There is a simple message to the designers - grow up and get out more. There are plenty of parts of the world where internet access is "patchy" even at international hotels or expensive or both. Then there are those parts of the world which have no access - aircraft. I am in the market to replace my 3 year old Nook HD+, Nexus 9 will not be on the shortlist
odedia - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
Are there any plans for an iMac 5k review?Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
I'd have loved to have seen how well this compared to Intel's second gen Atom, had the licensing worked out. Presumably the GPU would be better if nothing else...maybe Nvidia could have shipped a Windows version of their Shield products, which would be awesome!Still tempted by this since there's no Windows version of Marvel Unlimited...
soccerballtux - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
HI DOES THIS HAVE THE GOOGLE ON IT?/varad - Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - link
NO, THE GOOGLE IS STILL IN MOUNTAIN VIEW. /SPwnstar - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
LOL