Phone performance

Guest2 · 11 Oct 2011 at 11:18

I' not an Apple fanboy at all (and infact hate imacs)

Looking at these stats how is the iphone 4S so much faster than the iphone 4?

GL Benchmark 720p 122.7fps on iphone 4s and 15.3 on iphone 4!

http://www.avforums.com/forums/iphone/1527186-iphone-4s-benchmarks.html

Caseh · 11 Oct 2011 at 11:30

Well the new processor is a lot quicker, and the GPU difference is just mental, so I suppose there is a huge gap. That does seem overly big though!

kona786 · 11 Oct 2011 at 12:16

GPU delelopment in the mobile sector is progressing rapidly - next year Qualcomm's New Snapdragon S4 (Adreno 225 gpu) will be even faster, with the GPU more than twice as fast as the ipad2 (PowerVR SGX 543MP2) - (48 GFLOPS vs 19.2 GFLOPS @ 300MHz)

Guest2 · 11 Oct 2011 at 12:22

kona786 said:
GPU delelopment in the mobile sector is progressing rapidly - next year Qualcomm's New Snapdragon S4 (Adreno 225 gpu) will be even faster, with the GPU more than twice as fast as the ipad2 (PowerVR SGX 543MP2) - (48 GFLOPS vs 19.2 GFLOPS @ 300MHz)

What phone will that GPu be used in?

Its alright having an awesome GPU but if there are no developers creating stuff for it then its not much use. Might be able to play angry birds really fast but thats about it

With around 1 million iphone 4S pre-orders, there should be a huge market for development of new apps and games

Von Luck · 11 Oct 2011 at 12:55

Robbo · 11 Oct 2011 at 13:25

The 4S (as demonstrated) is actually a very good upgrade, it is absolutely more than powerful enough to last a good couple of years, if not more.

The issue with people being 'disappointed' is that they wanted an all new design and a larger screen (4").

If you can look past the 3.5" screen, it's a very powerful bit of kit.

mrk · 11 Oct 2011 at 13:51

But then again you could ask did it need to be so much more powerful than the iP4? I've yet to find something that runs slow on the current iPhone and the lack of big screen also means there's no real need for a beefier GPU t shift pixels so fast.

Camera is pretty amazing though on the S.

kona786 · 11 Oct 2011 at 14:36

Von Luck said:
Comparison with other handsets is interesting too - goes to show that uber-clocked CPUs/GPUs are pointless if the OS doesn't fully utilise them (although I'd expect to see their benchmarks jump significantly when running ICS).

If your talking about Android 2.3 - it does put dual cores to good use - fact.

mrk said:
But then again you could ask did it need to be so much more powerful than the iP4? I've yet to find something that runs slow on the current iPhone and the lack of big screen also means there's no real need for a beefier GPU t shift pixels so fast.

Camera is pretty amazing though on the S.

If you didnt put a more powerful gpu in then you can't get all the fancy shading/extra effects in 3d games.

not to dual cores was needed for the camera and 1080p recording.

Guest2 · 11 Oct 2011 at 14:38

Robbo said:
The 4S (as demonstrated) is actually a very good upgrade, it is absolutely more than powerful enough to last a good couple of years, if not more.

The issue with people being 'disappointed' is that they wanted an all new design and a larger screen (4").

If you can look past the 3.5" screen, it's a very powerful bit of kit.

I'm glad they didnt upgrade the screen to 4" It would have been too big to hold with a bigger screen. Like the Galaxy S2 feels too big, its more like a tablet than a phone.

ShortWarning · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:31

mrk said:
But then again you could ask did it need to be so much more powerful than the iP4? I've yet to find something that runs slow on the current iPhone and the lack of big screen also means there's no real need for a beefier GPU t shift pixels so fast.

While I agree with this, if phone manufacturers don't use big numbers then people moan about how underpowered it is (regardless of how well it actually runs).

I was pretty underwhelmed by the upgrade (just because of upcoming Android phones) but they are just numbers and IOS or Android are going to run pretty much the same whether those numbers double or not.

muon · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:32

Guest2 said:
I' not an Apple fanboy at all (and infact hate imacs)

Looking at these stats how is the iphone 4S so much faster than the iphone 4?

GL Benchmark 720p 122.7fps on iphone 4s and 15.3 on iphone 4!

http://www.avforums.com/forums/iphone/1527186-iphone-4s-benchmarks.html

Iphone 4 had a rubbish gpu (even for its time) is the simple answer. The A5 has a cutting edge gpu this time round.

Pottsey · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:37

Am I right in thinking the Iphone 4s has more power then most none Apple tablets? It looks like its GPU could beat most tablets on the market.

kona786 · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:41

^^^ GPU wise yes - but there always something more powerful round the corner.

muon · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:45

Pottsey said:
Am I right in thinking the Iphone 4s has more power then most none Apple tablets? It looks like its GPU could beat most tablets on the market.

Yep, SGX543 x 2 is very good. In fact a single SGX540 at 300mhz+ is much better than the gpu in Tegra 2.

Pottsey · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:45

Your right this is just a refresh. The true next gen chips based on Rogue will make this look positively slow and could well be faster than many desktop PC’s. No way would I buy a phone or tablet right now, not untill a real next gen arrives.

muon · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:47

Pottsey said:
Your right this is just a refresh. The true next gen chips based on Rogue will make this look positively slow and could well be faster than many desktop PC’s. No way would I buy a phone or tablet right now, not untill a real next gen arrives.

Nothing will be beating SGX543 cores anytime soon. Maybe multiple Mali400 cores will give it trouble.

The new PSP has 4 of the SGX543 cores.

Pottsey · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:51

ghost101 said:
Nothing will be beating SGX543 cores anytime soon. Maybe multiple Mali400 cores will give it trouble.

The new PSP has 4 of the SGX543 cores.

SGX543 is just a series 5 chip that’s been refreshed and refreshed for the past few years. The true next gen chips are series 6 which will blow the series 5 away. I believe the reason we didn’t get an Iphone 5 is due to it waiting for series 6 next year.

That’s why I don’t think it’s wise to upgrade right now.

muon · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:54

Pottsey said:
SGX543 is just a series 5 chip that’s been refreshed and refreshed for the past few years. The true next gen chips are series 6 which will blow the series 5 away. I believe the reason we didn’t get an Iphone 5 is due to it waiting for series 6 next year.

That’s why I don’t think it’s wise to upgrade right now.

So you're suggesting waiting a year+ for that to appear. Even TI's roadmaps only show 543 appearing later next year.

http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics-hardware/mali-400-mp.php

Mali400MP is scalable to 4 cores. That's a lot of gpu processing power.

Glaucus · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:56

Guest2 said:
What phone will that GPu be used in?

Its alright having an awesome GPU but if there are no developers creating stuff for it then its not much use. Might be able to play angry birds really fast but thats about it

With around 1 million iphone 4S pre-orders, there should be a huge market for development of new apps and games

And this is one of many things that I love about iPhone and wp7. Huge instant Market base with small scope if hardware. Means developers will program and the apps will work well.

As said 4s has totally different internals.

nikeair94 · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:56

If you are going to buy the iPhone 4s as a new phone (not an upgrade from iPhone 4) then it isn't too bad a deal. But if you are just wanting to upgrade then I would stick with the iPhone 4. No need to spend hundreds more on a few practically unneeded features.