Apple A8 Benchmarked

[Eug]

Every time Apple releases a new phone it kept something old in there, maybe purposely. This time it is the ram. Apple probably banks on that 1 GB is good enough for most users and that ppl will still line up to buy the new phones. Then when they refresh with the "S" version, they can just increase to 2GB and make it sound like a worthy upgrade.

This is the usual practice for Apple.

Apple sells what it thinks the mainstream wants, and quite frankly, 2 GB isn't a great selling point to the mainstream. Furthermore, Apple doesn't usually blow its load all in one go. It does incremental updates to stimulate the upgrade urge by consumers. Also, Apple has never marketed RAM in iOS devices, because it doesn't need to. Because they don't market RAM, nobody ever thinks about it, except the techies.

And it works. Apple just set a new record for iPhone sales after a new launch, with the iPhone 6/6+, despite the fact most of us think it's quite limited by the 1 GB RAM.

However, if you're a techie like us, and you follow these things, you can manage your purchases wisely. In my case, I refused to buy the original iPad because it came with only a piddly 256 MB of RAM. I knew that it was quite limiting even then, and it would quickly lose relative responsiveness with OS updates. Instead, I waited until the 512 MB version came out the following year, and bought that instead. Big difference. Basically everyone I knew with the original iPad scrapped it after a year.

I am managing my new iPad purchases accordingly. I will not buy a 1 GB iPad in 2014. I did buy a iPhone with 1 GB back in 2013, but the difference there is that it's a phone, with a much lower resolution, and I knew what I was getting into. I figured it could be the last 4" iPhone, and also, I needed a new phone, and also my surfing requirements on a phone are less than on a tablet. But for a tablet in 2014, I demand 2 GB. If I don't get it, I guess it will be a 2015 purchase, for the same reason I didn't buy the original iPad.

 

[mohit9206]

Just wait a bit and you will see many iPhone 6 owners complaining how slow/laggy their phone is when they have multiple tabs in Safari open alongwith video player,a game or other such apps also running in the background.The Safari browser already refreshes every time you switch tabs.But i can see why people love Apple so much,the OS just works,the high quality hardware,the good service,the ecosystem,and status symbol,etc.Apple makes great products np doubt but id rather have had the cpu and gpu stay the same as 5S and the ram instead have doubled to 2gb and then in 6S they could've upgraded cpu and gpu because the 5S already has a great cpu and gpu that didn't need upgrading as much as the ram did.

 

[Larries]

Just wait a bit and you will see many iPhone 6 owners complaining how slow/laggy their phone is when they have multiple tabs in Safari open alongwith video player,a game or other such apps also running in the background.The Safari browser already refreshes every time you switch tabs.But i can see why people love Apple so much,the OS just works,the high quality hardware,the good service,the ecosystem,and status symbol,etc.Apple makes great products np doubt but id rather have had the cpu and gpu stay the same as 5S and the ram instead have doubled to 2gb and then in 6S they could've upgraded cpu and gpu because the 5S already has a great cpu and gpu that didn't need upgrading as much as the ram did.

I have a iPad3 (is it 1GB? considering that newer iPads are not yet 2GB, I guess the iPad3 is 1GB at most) and a Nexus 7 2013 (I remembered the spec to be 2GB RAM). In ~11 month of using the Nexus 7 2013, I found that the Nexus goes laggy after opening 3-4 games; and I had to reboot the Nexus 7 2013 4-5 times already due to slow response. The iPad3 constantly have 30 games started (including 2 games that I run on the Nexus 7 also), and is more responsive than the Nexus 7 2013.

This is contrary to what people say here about amount of RAM. Is there some issue with Nexus 7 2013 running too many apps at the same time?

I read this thread and someone else asked other than the Safari reloading issue, are there any known issues in 1GB limiting use. So far, it all about Safari reloading and speculation.

I DO wish the iPhone 6 is 2GB and is strongly debating whether to just go Andriod. But I just fear I am just duplicating my Nexus 7 2013 experience

 

[Eug]

Just wait a bit and you will see many iPhone 6 owners complaining how slow/laggy their phone is when they have multiple tabs in Safari open alongwith video player,a game or other such apps also running in the background.The Safari browser already refreshes every time you switch tabs.But i can see why people love Apple so much,the OS just works,the high quality hardware,the good service,the ecosystem,and status symbol,etc.Apple makes great products np doubt but id rather have had the cpu and gpu stay the same as 5S and the ram instead have doubled to 2gb and then in 6S they could've upgraded cpu and gpu because the 5S already has a great cpu and gpu that didn't need upgrading as much as the ram did.

I have a 5s and 5 at home. We've been running them for over a week now. Lag in iOS 8 is not a significant issue. They're both speedy in fact, and most of the time the 5s and 5 feel exactly the same.

However, what IS an issue on my 5s is tab reloading in Safari.

Lag is an issue on the iPad 2, but then again that thing is 3.5 years old with a 1 GHz dual-core ARM A9 and 512 MB RAM, and I suspect with the iOS 8.1 update, it will make the iPad 2 less laggy (like iOS 7.1 did vs iOS 7.0).

 

[TreVader]

I have a iPad3 (is it 1GB? considering that newer iPads are not yet 2GB, I guess the iPad3 is 1GB at most) and a Nexus 7 2013 (I remembered the spec to be 2GB RAM). In ~11 month of using the Nexus 7 2013, I found that the Nexus goes laggy after opening 3-4 games; and I had to reboot the Nexus 7 2013 4-5 times already due to slow response. The iPad3 constantly have 30 games started (including 2 games that I run on the Nexus 7 also), and is more responsive than the Nexus 7 2013.



This is contrary to what people say here about amount of RAM. Is there some issue with Nexus 7 2013 running too many apps at the same time?



I read this thread and someone else asked other than the Safari reloading issue, are there any known issues in 1GB limiting use. So far, it all about Safari reloading and speculation.



I DO wish the iPhone 6 is 2GB and is strongly debating whether to just go Andriod. But I just fear I am just duplicating my Nexus 7 2013 experience

If the price for a phone that actually works right is having to reload browser tabs I'm happy to pay it.



The thing that really made me throw out my Galaxy S4 was when a pop up ad installed by some game on the google plus store (and had great "reviews") prevented me from answering a call from my boss. That's why almost every Doctor, Lawyer, or person who has a lot of responsibility uses iOS. Android just isn't reliable and definitely isn't secure. How can you have company phones run android when there are literally thousands of ways to hack it and nobody uses the same browser or apps? It's just not viable in a business setting.


If you are ok with sacrificing security and reliability along with aesthetics for more ram then android may be worth it. Not for me, tho.

 

[Idontcare]

This is the usual practice for Apple.

Apple sells what it thinks the mainstream wants, and quite frankly...

...they have made a shedload, infact beyond a shedload, of money doing precisely that.

Eug, you created an awesome post full of the facts and intelligently nuanced points that we all have come to appreciate of your posts, but you already nailed it within your first 20 words or so.

Apple is what it is today because they were/are stellar judges of what mainstream wants at any given point in time.

We, the 0.1% techno-nerds, may rabidly rant about Apple's decision to go with "just" 1GB versus 2GB, but who is the one laughing to the bank here?

 

[Essence_of_War]

but who is the one laughing to the bank here?

ME! :awe::awe::awe:

Oh wait...no...

 

[Arachnotronic]

The thing that really made me throw out my Galaxy S4 was when a pop up ad installed by some game on the google plus store (and had great "reviews") prevented me from answering a call from my boss. That's why almost every Doctor, Lawyer, or person who has a lot of responsibility uses iOS. Android just isn't reliable and definitely isn't secure. How can you have company phones run android when there are literally thousands of ways to hack it and nobody uses the same browser or apps? It's just not viable in a business setting.

Android is the first spyware that people have actually embraced with open arms

 

[coercitiv]

Android is the first spyware that people have actually embraced with open arms

I don't know why I bother to come back to this thread for news/comments about Apple A8.

I guess we can all call it a done thread and go watch them stolen iCloud private pictures.

 

[Rakehellion]

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

 

[Eug]

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

Multi-level line up at Toronto Eaton Centre:

This includes people just lining up and also people who did online reservations for in-store pickup. Unlocked and locked.

Whatever happened to those in New York lining up from a couple of weeks ago?

 

[witeken]

I don't seem to understand... How is this a fallacy? Can you give me specific examples that prove to me that a SoC that is much better than the current ones would provide a better experience to the end user? Stating that my statement is a fallacy without providing evidence seems like youre simply... Poisoning the well...? ;-)

Evolving technology is the cornerstone of the industry. Better, cheaper, faster, more efficient technology is always better. Moore's Law is the best example of this. You could argue that 28nm transistors are small enough, why would we need better, isn't it good enough?

Of course not. To give one specific example: high-end technology will trickle down to the low-end. I wouldn't hesitate half a second between an iPhone 6 and an iPhone with 4X the CPU and GPU performance for the same price.

Or would you?

 

[witeken]

I know how much the NAND is WORTH, and I know how much they are selling it for, and I still buy it... Why? Because even though I KNOW I am getting ripped off, it does not change the fact that the cost IS worth the benefits to me. Apple is a company, and the job of any company selling a product is to sell it at a price that consumers are willing to pay. Can you blame movie theaters for selling popcorn at $10-20 each? Or water $1 bottle? Flowers or jeans for $50?

If people were not willing to pay this much for extra storage, Apple would undoubtedly reduce the price / increase base amounts of NAND. If anyone is to blame, its people being fundamentally ignorant. Its something I find to be an unavoidable truth in any market.

I don't understand the logic there. If you think you are getting ripped off, you should not buy it.

 

[witeken]

Multi-level line up at Toronto Eaton Centre:

Why would they do that? Are their current iPhone 5ss so bad that they so desperately need the iPhone 6 to survive in this world?

 

[jpiniero]

Oh no. Plenty are scalpers, esp Asian ones who sell to Chineese.

 

[Qwertilot]

Well, at this point I really do think that even 4 x the CPU/GPU performance would be rather marginal for an awful lot of people in a phone. Surely won't be pushing screen resolutions higher than this, which removes a big chunk of the need for GPU.

You'd certainly not surrender a big chunk of battery life for it. 4 x the battery life would be magic of course!

There seems to be to no apriori barrier to them keeping doing what they did with the A8 for the next few editions. Modest performance bumps and a lot more efficiency. Like Intel have been doing for a while now.

They might well do some faster A8/9/10 etc options for other stuff of course.

 

[Rakehellion]

Multi-level line up at Toronto Eaton Centre:

This includes people just lining up and also people who did online reservations for in-store pickup. Unlocked and locked.

Whatever happened to those in New York lining up from a couple of weeks ago?

When I bought the 5, the Apple Store at Grand Central Station had an entire track shut down just to accommodate the line. I didn't see the fiasco at the 5th Avenue store. I bought mine on the UWS after about a 30 minute wait.

I'm not buying the 6 today. Maybe in a few weeks.

 

[Rakehellion]

Why would they do that? Are their current iPhone 5ss so bad that they so desperately need the iPhone 6 to survive in this world?

Do you do anything but spew anti-Apple fanboy gibberish?

 

[Rakehellion]

Evolving technology is the cornerstone of the industry. Better, cheaper, faster, more efficient technology is always better. Moore's Law is the best example of this. You could argue that 28nm transistors are small enough, why would we need better, isn't it good enough?

Of course not. To give one specific example: high-end technology will trickle down to the low-end. I wouldn't hesitate half a second between an iPhone 6 and an iPhone with 4X the CPU and GPU performance for the same price.

Or would you?

128GB is obviously better than 64GB, but I'm not buying a 128GB phone because I don't need that much.

Much like you probably don't own a 16-core Xeon.

Battery life, cost, display resolution, color gamut, wireless speed, weight are all vectors to consider when purchasing a mobile device. It isn't all or nothing.

 

[liahos1]

got my iphone 6. does anyone want me to run any benches?

so far:
Kraken: 4523.2
Sunspider: 338.6

 

[Rakehellion]

got my iphone 6. does anyone want me to run any benches?

so far:
Kraken: 4523.2
Sunspider: 338.6

Browsermark
http://browsermark.rightware.com

GFXBench
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glbenchmark-2.7/id627547197?mt=8

 

[Eug]

GFXBench
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glbenchmark-2.7/id627547197?mt=8

I'm most curious about the on-screen benchmarks, particularly against the 5s and iPad Air.

BTW, here are some benchmarks from BareFeats. I don't know how they published this 2 days ago for the 6 and 6 plus.

Their GFXBench numbers only include the 5s and lower though.

Our poor little iPhone 4 looks so sad. For the record, I just did the on-screen GFXBench T-Rex test on my iPhone 5s and got 40.6 fps (2273), so very similar to the BareFeats number.

 

[witeken]

128GB is obviously better than 64GB, but I'm not buying a 128GB phone because I don't need that much.

Much like you probably don't own a 16-core Xeon.

Battery life, cost, display resolution, color gamut, wireless speed, weight are all vectors to consider when purchasing a mobile device. It isn't all or nothing.

Please don't use a straw man. For starters, the 128GB version of the iPhone is only useful when you actually use >64GB. More processing speed is always useful because no matter what things you do, the computing will be the same, it will just be faster.

Secondly, price. So far, Apple only releases 1 SoC in every generation of iPhones. Your hypothetical 4X faster SoC has the same price (at least that's what I supposed and explicitly stated). So if you have 2 iPhones with the same price, 1 with a 4X faster SoC as only difference, which one would you choose?

I hope you see this is a (the same one as a few posts ago) rhetorical question, to imply the obviousness of advancing technology.

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... Which exactly proves my point that advancing technology is always better than asking a company to stop innovating because it is "good enough"; even if you don't need (although you don't know which awesome applications will become available with faster technology) a faster SoC, you can simply buy a cheaper one that was high-end some time ago (which will be cheaper than if it was never replaced with a faster successor).

So my question is: do we agree that the good enough argument is a fallacy, or do I first have to point out that I don't own a 16-core Xeon because of its price, which will inevitably drop (solely because Intel doesn't have a 'good enough' strategy as well)?

 

[CHADBOGA]

Do you do anything but spew anti-Apple fanboy gibberish?

His question was perfectly reasonable.

 

[liahos1]

hmmm cant seem to run browsermark or octane on safari