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Next Gen Exynos laughs at your Tegra 3

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poofyhairguy said:
Um, no. Out of the two (CPU, GPU) the CPU currently matters the most on mobile devices. Otherwise the 3GS would be considered a far superior experience to the iPhone 4.
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No, A5 is mediocre CPU with a superior GPU, yet it remains unchallenged and there is yet a serious complaint to be made about it's CPU performance. There are many software dependent factors that make the iOS devices tick better but the hardware cannot be ignored. A direct performance comparison to others, should a SGX 543 MP2 Android device ever appear on the market would be quite telling.

I think there are many desktops and mobile devices out there that prove a average CPU/above average GPU combo in a typical usage scenario fares better than an above average CPU with an average GPU.
 
Rick James Astley said:
I think there are many desktops and mobile devices out there that prove a average CPU/above average GPU combo in a typical usage scenario fares better than an above average CPU with an average GPU.
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So can you show me how the SGX 543 MP2 improves my experience instead of the ULP Geforce?
 
Rick James Astley said:
A4 was more power efficient compared to other single core solutions. A5 maintained that and added performance advantage. I never said it was magical nor have I forgotten that it's CPU is a "plain" dual A9 Cortex core.
.
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A4 was just a underclocked Hummingbird with a weaker gpu, the cpu cores were completely identical except Samsung clocked their version at the full 1ghz in phones.
 
Rick James Astley said:
No, A5 is mediocre CPU with a superior GPU, yet it remains unchallenged and there is yet a serious complaint to be made about it's CPU performance. There are many software dependent factors that make the iOS devices tick better but the hardware cannot be ignored. A direct performance comparison to others, should a SGX 543 MP2 Android device ever appear on the market would be quite telling.

I think there are many desktops and mobile devices out there that prove a average CPU/above average GPU combo in a typical usage scenario fares better than an above average CPU with an average GPU.
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What scenarios would that be? The only one i can think of is gaming. And it makes far more sense for Apple to use cutting edge GPUs since they make a few billions more in the gaming department. Android is too fragmented to truly take advantage of the GPU power.

Video decoding usually gets its own component in a SOC, not just using the GPU, web browsing is mostly CPU intensive.. I cant think of any scenario honestly were GPU power would make a difference outside of gaming
 
ITHURTSWHENIP said:
What scenarios would that be? The only one i can think of is gaming. And it makes far more sense for Apple to use cutting edge GPUs since they make a few billions more in the gaming department. Android is too fragmented to truly take advantage of the GPU power.

Video decoding usually gets its own component in a SOC, not just using the GPU, web browsing is mostly CPU intensive.. I cant think of any scenario honestly were GPU power would make a difference outside of gaming
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Interface. If iOS moves to a higher res display (2048 x 1536), it'll need some pretty beefy GPU to keep up with its current UI performance. Theoretically, A5 should be good enough as it has just enough fill rate power, but games would start chugging.

Also a number of apps on the App Store make use of OpenGL to accelerate their drawing performance. I would guess that they are doing kind of a hack-y implementation of OpenCL.

There are references to OpenCL in iOS 5, so perhaps Apple would implement OpenCL in the next iOS revision next year. When that happens, GPU will become even more important to iOS.
 
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runawayprisoner said:
Interface. If iOS moves to a higher res display (2048 x 1536), it'll need some pretty beefy GPU to keep up with its current UI performance. Theoretically, A5 should be good enough as it has just enough fill rate power, but games would start chugging.

Also a number of apps on the App Store make use of OpenGL to accelerate their drawing performance. I would guess that they are doing kind of a hack-y implementation of OpenCL.

There are references to OpenCL in iOS 5, so perhaps Apple would implement OpenCL in the next iOS revision next year. When that happens, GPU will become even more important to iOS.
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There is little difference in the UI speed between the Iphone 4 and Iphone 4S. The speed is mostly seen in how fast apps open and web browsing and of course gaming

While your point is valid. I think you overestimate just how powerful the GPU needs to be for UI performance. Im not sure if they would allow games to run in that resolution, even mainstream gaming laptops struggle at the highest resolution and they are using far more powerful GPUs than anything coming for IOS devices

Nexus is running on an old 540 at HD resolution. We do need powerful GPUs for UI but hardly Rogue/T658 level
 
runawayprisoner said:
Interface. If iOS moves to a higher res display (2048 x 1536), it'll need some pretty beefy GPU to keep up with its current UI performance. Theoretically, A5 should be good enough as it has just enough fill rate power, but games would start chugging.
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No reason to render games at anywhere resembling full resolution on a screen with a sky-high PPI.
 
ITHURTSWHENIP said:
There is little difference in the UI speed between the Iphone 4 and Iphone 4S. The speed is mostly seen in how fast apps open and web browsing and of course gaming

While your point is valid. I think you overestimate just how powerful the GPU needs to be for UI performance. Im not sure if they would allow games to run in that resolution, even mainstream gaming laptops struggle at the highest resolution and they are using far more powerful GPUs than anything coming for IOS devices

Nexus is running on an old 540 at HD resolution. We do need powerful GPUs for UI but hardly Rogue/T658 level
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You don't see much difference between 4 and 4S because the SGX535 has just enough fill rate to handle the display on the 4. A 960 x 540 screen at 32-bit depth takes about 120MPixels/s to achieve 60fps smooth frame rate. That's well within SGX535's capability, which can do around 150 - 180MPixels if I recall correctly.

A 2048 x 1536 screen, however, requires about 750MPixels. It needs roughly 5-6x more fill rate. But again, I think A5 should be fast enough for that. The problem is with games.

Current games are more limited by shader processing power than fill rate. If no shader is involved, you can run a game at resolutions beyond 2560 x 1440 in most modern GPUs just fine.

But shaders complicate things because the higher the resolution, the more the shader processors have to calculate, and that's why you don't see laptops do well in modern games when you start cranking resolution up.

Some games that use a minimal amount of shaders, like Skyrim, do run well on slower GPUs at higher resolutions, though.

Pia said:
No reason to render games at anywhere resembling full resolution on a screen with a sky-high PPI.
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You should try telling that to iOS devs. Most of them try to run their 3D games at native resolution on the iPhone 4...

Heck, they try to apply AA on the iPhone 4S.
 
Puddle Jumper said:
A4 was just a underclocked Hummingbird with a weaker gpu, the cpu cores were completely identical except Samsung clocked their version at the full 1ghz in phones.
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That is correct. I recall that the A4 had a good power draw yet I forgot that it was clocked lower. But how long did it take for an SoC to appear to truly spank the A4 ,much in the same fashion the A5 spanked everything in March?

sontin said:
So can you show me how the SGX 543 MP2 improves my experience instead of the ULP Geforce?
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I cannot. Since it's only iOS devices that use that GPU and the older ones perform satisfactory, I can't assume that software isn't at least partially responsible. Though devices that feature SGX543 execute browsing, scrolling, UI animations, gaming and video playback better, which is also true for the best non iOS competitor. Granted, non A5 iOS devices not only have inferior GPU's, they also utilize a 50% slower CPU as well. Ultimately it's hard to determine exactly how much each component is responsible for the improvements.

S3 and Exynos 4210 performance differ the most in GPU output and SGS2 is widely perceived as "the least laggy" Android phone.

Maybe we could agree that Android devices by default have a higher hardware performance demand they need to meet in order to perform in the manner of latest iOS devices. Yet the best mobile GPU is absent from Android devices, it should have been opposite.

Another thing to consider is that Apple may launch the A6 in March, before others even beat the A5. I won't argue that the G Nexus and T-Prime perform well. But isn't it logical that they would perform even better with a top of the line GPU? I can't imagine a scenario in which an Android phone featuring the SGX543 wouldn't perform better.


Bottom line is, starting 3 & 1/2 weeks from today, we'll be presented with 2012 devices. Does it really make sense to buy a device in 2012 that's inferior to an early 2011 product?

I am starting to believe that unless Android OEM's start featuring the SGX543, we'll have to wait quite for a chip to dethrone the A5. It may take a 28/32nm SoC with a dual core A15 Cortex and a truly worthy GPU (Adreno 320/Mali T-604) to get it done. As much as I don't like this prospect because it involves waiting til end of 2012, if the brief history is any indication, it may turn out to be true. I certainly hope Krait, Exynos and others prove me wrong.

Either way, I am looking forward to comparisons should a phone or a tablet feature the OMAP4470.
 
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Unless you're gaming (and playing games that actually tax the GPU), does it really matter if you have a beefier GPU?
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You mean running GLBenchmark? We certainly haven't seen any benefit inside of games when comparing the A5 to even Tegra2.
 
BenSkywalker said:
You mean running GLBenchmark? We certainly haven't seen any benefit inside of games when comparing the A5 to even Tegra2.
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I think we'll see the benefit of powerful GPUs soon. The next Gen Exynos is supporting 2560x1600 resolution. This is going to allow us to have retina tablets.
 
Mopetar said:
Unless you're gaming (and playing games that actually tax the GPU), does it really matter if you have a beefier GPU?
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GPU matters in browsing, UI scrolling, video playback as well. It's not a coincidence that the best performing devices also happen to have the best performing GPU's.

As for games, there are very few titles taking advantage of better GPU's. The few ones that are out there are exclusive either to a platform like Infinity Blade or to a SoC, such as "enhanced" version of Shadowgun for Tegra3.

Smartphone and tablet gaming are on the rise though. Unity engine and equivalent games may not populate the market now but that's changing.

Even without gaming, a better GPU makes a difference in every usage scenario.

TI may have accomplished the task set by Google with an inferior GPU but not before clocking the s... out of the SGX540. No one would have complained if the G Nexus featured the OMAP4470 instead.
 
Rick James Astley said:
TI may have accomplished the task set by Google with an inferior GPU but not before clocking the s... out of the SGX540. No one would have complained if the G Nexus featured the OMAP4470 instead.
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The Galaxy Nexus wasn't designed as a high end phone. It's a developer phone, targeting the baseline hardware expectations for ICS. It's actually a good thing that it doesn't need beefy hardware, that says good things about ICS.
 
Red Storm said:
The Galaxy Nexus wasn't designed as a high end phone. It's a developer phone, targeting the baseline hardware expectations for ICS. It's actually a good thing that it doesn't need beefy hardware, that says good things about ICS.
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I don't think this argument quite holds. A developer doesn't really need the baseline hardware to be able to optimize their apps. Also, if the baseline is what the OS requires, then it looks quite bad for Android.

For instance, the Nexus One has inferior hardware to the Nexus S, and the Nexus S is inferior to the G Nexus. Does that mean Android just gets worse and requires more hardware over time? I don't think so. It simply means Google has just upped the baseline.

But with that being so, I think they should have upped the baseline even more.

Perhaps better hardware isn't necessarily required for ICS. But there is nothing wrong with having more, right?
 
Rick James Astley said:
GPU matters in browsing, UI scrolling, video playback as well. It's not a coincidence that the best performing devices also happen to have the best performing GPU's.
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I'm pretty sure the GPU is not what's slowing down Android right now. Basic stuff like UI, video playback, scrolling are not hampered by GPUs. The iPhone 4 is buttery smooth with its crap GPU on a retina display. Look at Windows Phone 7. What were they based on? Adreno 200s. TERRIBLE GPU. Worse than the Droid 1, worse than the iPhone 3GS/4... Nexus One level. WP7 phones are buttery smooth.

You don't NEED an SGS2 level hardware to deliver a smooth experience. As much as people LIKE to complain about the Galaxy Nexus, it's specced just fine. If software was as optimized as the iOS world, that phone would be flying no matter what. The only time you might run into issues is high res 3D gaming. But for basic tasks, the phone should be fine. Of course we've been trained that inefficiencies and fragmentation causes Android to run much slower than say iOS on similar hardware. Thus everyone feels the need to have THE fastest CPU and GPU just to get good performance. And once the new processor is out, the previous dual core is now "slow as shit." Is the SOC of the Galaxy Nexus slower than the iPhone 4S? If we take raw CPU power, I'm pretty sure it spanks the shit out of the iPhone 4S. Yet we're so concerned the Galaxy Nexus is "too slow" only because the SGS2 is faster. How about we just optimize ICS or any Android OS.

No one in the iOS world is overly concerned with CPU speeds. While there's a marked difference between the iPad 1 and 2 and the iPhone 4 and 4S, it's not like "oh noz, I'm running a slideshow."
 
BenSkywalker said:
You are absolutely correct. My point was that GLBenchmark was utter crap and we see nothing like its' results in actual games.
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The improvement going from Tegra 2 to Tegra 3 is simply amazing. But that is still in line with what GLBenchmark showed.

Comparing Riptide GP on Tegra 3 to the iOS version is more complicated... as the version of the game was made with the baseline being the 3rd generation devices, like iPhone 3GS and iPad, and I'm not really aware of any specific enhancements that the developers made to the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S.

If we disregard GLBenchmark results for all iOS devices, it's likely in line with what Tegra 3 has to show in comparison to Tegra 2. Not sure about other devices, though.
 
BenSkywalker said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZcquSxny5k

My point stands.
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How so? Infinity Blade 2 is universally hailed as the best looking phone game ever by pretty much every gaming website on the net. There is nothing on Tegra that can match it

I saw little difference between Riptide for Ipad 2 and the Tegra 3 version save for some motion blurring effects. And thats despite Nvidia paying them for making an optimized version while the IOS device was developed for the SGX535
 
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