Apple A8 Benchmarked

[TreVader]

I'll have a look at one in person at ~2pm


Will be 64GB. Space Gray if that's relevant.

 

[Arachnotronic]

iPhone 6 is out today. Has anyone bought one yet?

Mine was delivered today. 6 Plus.

 

[TreVader]

. 6 Plus.

Ooo post benches

 

[Eug]

GFX BENCH:
Manhattan 1862 (30fps)
1080p offscreen manahttan 1105 (17.8fps)
TRex: 2885 (51.5 fps)
1080p offscreen TREX: 2388 42.7fps

Low Level Tests:
ALU 1801 60fps
1080p ALU Offscreen 5152 (85.9 fps)
Alpha Blending 7655 mb/s
1080p Alpha Blending Offscreen 8334 mb/s
Driver Overhead 1753 (58.4fps)
Diver Overhead Offscreen 5808 (96.8 fps)
Fill 3471 mtexels/s
1080p OIffscreen Fill 3421 mtexel/s

Could you do the on-screen test, eg. T-Rex?

We all know the off-screen tests will be faster for A8 vs A7, but that may not be case for on-screen. It seems A8 is still faster with the iPhone 6 though.

http://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?D=Apple+iPhone+6&testgroup=null&benchmark=null

However, I wonder if A8 is still faster with the iPhone 6 plus.

Mine was delivered today. 6 Plus.

We need benches! See above.

 

[liahos1]

Could you do the on-screen test, eg. T-Rex?

We all know the off-screen tests will be faster for A8 vs A7, but that may not be case for on-screen. It seems A8 is still faster with the iPhone 6 though.

http://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?D=Apple+iPhone+6&testgroup=null&benchmark=null

However, I wonder if A8 is still faster with the iPhone 6 plus.



We need benches! See above.

Just Ran Trex again onscreen
2882, 51.5 fps

 

[Rakehellion]

if you have 2 iPhones with the same price, 1 with a 4X faster SoC as only difference, which one would you choose?

4x faster at the same price isn't an option for any phone manufacturer, so that's a pretty ridiculous hypothetical.

You could get more than a 4x speed increase by putting a Xeon E5 in the next iPhone. Is building an iPhone with a Xeon a good idea or a bad idea? Why or why not?

Or maybe you could build a 10-core A8 at 5Ghz and blow all the other phones away. Is that viable?

Which exactly proves my point that advancing technology is always better than asking a company to stop innovating

In what way has Apple stopped innovating? The iPhone 6 is faster with greatly improved battery life and they've apparently eliminated CPU throttling.

That's improvement on three different vectors, speed being only one of them. Explain how that is bad.

 

[Rakehellion]

His question was perfectly reasonable.

It's possible, but three negative posts in a row with no contention just makes me roll my eyes.

 

[TreVader]

I have A7 at 42 FPS for trex onscreen. A8 is pulling 10fps more at slightly higher res. Impressive but we will see about the plus.

 

[Eug]

Just Ran Trex again onscreen
2882, 51.5 fps

Thanks. Decent, and expected for the iPhone 6. We'll see what the 6 plus can do if Intel17 cooperates.

 

[liahos1]

browsermark and safari arent playing well for some reason.running webxprt now

 

[Rakehellion]

But you might, rightly so, say that those phones won't have the same price or availability. That is true; the iPhone 6 will drop in price when your hypothetical iPhone 6s drops in the market.

Here's the thing: We can't go a year into the future to use their technology today.

On a 2014 phone using 2014 technology, increasing the speed of the CPU will necessarily reduce battery life and will necessarily generate more heat. Those are a death sentence for a mobile device.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Ooo post benches

I arrive home late tonight; once I do, I'll post benchmarks.

Let me know what you'd like me to run, folks

 

[witeken]

4x faster at the same price isn't an option for any phone manufacturer, so that's a pretty ridiculous hypothetical.

You could get more than a 4x speed increase by putting a Xeon E5 in the next iPhone. Is building an iPhone with a Xeon a good idea or a bad idea? Why or why not?

Or maybe you could build a 10-core A8 at 5Ghz and blow all the other phones away. Is that viable?

In what way has Apple stopped innovating? The iPhone 6 is faster with greatly improved battery life and they've apparently eliminated CPU throttling.

That's improvement on three different vectors, speed being only one of them. Explain how that is bad.

Seems like another (maybe unintentional) straw man. So to make sure there is no confusion, let's take your original claim:

Lets say the Apple A9 suddenly has 4x CPU and GPU performance increase, what applications would benefit from this? It appears to me that nearly everything runs optimally already, and them majority of the apps don't even try to take full advantage of the current iPhone 5S SoC, with the exception of games like Infinity Blade... Thoughts?

So in your hypothetical scenario, it is possible and it would launch at the same price as the iPhone 6.

Also, I'm not saying Apple has stopped innovating. I'm just saying that if you buy this good enough argument, and you communicate this to the companies, that won't be a good thing; the iPhone 7 wouldn't be faster, which you suddenly seem to think is a bad thing since you say the faster iPhone 6 is innovation.

 

[witeken]

I have A7 at 42 FPS for trex onscreen. A8 is pulling 10fps more at slightly higher res. Impressive but we will see about the plus.

~30% is nothing compared to 2X Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia are claiming.

 

[liahos1]

this phone gets pretty hot running these benches and im at less than half battery now. is that normal?

 

[TreVader]

~30% is nothing compared to 2X Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia are claiming.

"Claiming" would be the key word there.



Intel and nvidia have a laughable presence in mobile phones. I wonder why you mention them?


Should apple watch out for AMD too?

 

[Rakehellion]

So in your hypothetical scenario

I never said that, homie. You quoted the wrong person.

There is no "good enough" argument. You have to stop improving at some point because technology has limits. Next year technology will be better.

 

[witeken]

"Claiming" would be the key word there.

We've seen benchmarks from K1, which are highly impressive. We've also know that Airmont will not get 50% more shaders from the same architecture like Apple, but have 4X as many EUs on a hugely improved architecture on a hugely improved node, so the 2X claim is more than justified. We also know that Qualcomm's 420 is 40% or so faster than 330, and 430 should be healthy improvement as well.

So compared to those SoCs, a 30% improvement isn't really impressive.

Intel and nvidia have a laughable presence in mobile phones. I wonder why you mention them?

Should apple watch out for AMD too?

That doesn't change the fact that the A8's GPU performance is unimpressive compared to other mobile SoCs.

 

[Rakehellion]

~30% is nothing compared to 2X Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia are claiming.

Claiming.

That doesn't change the fact that the A8's GPU performance is unimpressive compared to other mobile SoCs.

Looking at the GFXbench website, I don't see any phone that beats a score of 2300, so someone needs to put up or shut up.

 

[jdubs03]

this seems almost like arguing for the sake of arguing. The iPhones gpu is nowhere even near what tk1 can do (part of that could* be due to form factor), we'll see what happens with the next iPad air, because if they don't do something like an a8x they're going to be at a massive disadvantage component wise. I'm not including core m, because its a higher price, and no one will come close soon.

 

[witeken]

I never said that, homie. You quoted the wrong person.

Fair enough, my apologies for my mistake.

 

[North01]

Looking at the GFXbench website, I don't see any phone that beats a score of 2300, so someone needs to put up or shut up.

The iPhone 6 scores 17.8 fps in GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan (Offscreen).

The Galaxy S5 LTE-A (Snapdragon 805) scored 18.8 fps.

 

[jdubs03]

This just got posted:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-6-benchmark-results,news-19584.html

 

[TreVader]

This just got posted:



http://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-6-benchmark-results,news-19584.html

From review:

"Summary


That's a quick look at how the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus compared to the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 5s. The S5 displays more of the color gamut, but Apple's smartphones are by and large much brighter. In general, Apple's newest handhelds also outperform the S5 on many tests, making them the more powerful devices.

The most crucial test--one we're running this weekend--is battery life. The iPhone 5s lasted just 5 hours and 46 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test (Web surfing via LTE), which was well below the S5's runtime of 9 hours and 42 minutes. How will the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus compare? Stay tuned."


I had expected worse results, but that may be a result of the limited benchmark suite. It looks like A8 shouldn't have a huge problem keeping up with the S805 in the One and S5.

 

[liahos1]

Meh. It keeps up with android flagships but definitely does not bring the shock and awe of the a7. Enough to keep Apple fans happy.