The benchmarks are coming, and it looks as though the PVR SGX543MP GPU in the iPad 2 TROUNCES the Tegra 2.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/a...p2-benchmarked





This is reason for gloating, and should have the competition quite worried.

It seems that Apple made a remarkable decision. The competition, on the other hand played follow the leader, and it cost them a year.

I'm impressed.

I'm curious how the Adreno 220 and the Mali 400 will stack up to this formidable GPU design.

Wow that's some good gpu performances

Something tells me that GPU specs will suddenly matter

But this is most impressive.

Wow, I thought the A5 was only going to match the Tegra2... this thing really blows it out of the water (considering iOS has native apps over honeycomb's VM).

Here's a comparison:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...php?p=10822670

Two mistakes:

1) Honeycomb most certainly has native apps (games tend to be written in c++).

2) The chart lists the nexus s as being orion, which is wrong -- it's hummingbird. The galaxy S2 is exynos (orion).

1) We have yet to use an Android application written in c++, let alone benchmark it.

2) That post is old, I've updated it ... see post 2 of that thread.
(I still cannot put a real "maximum theoretical polygon/sec" for the 543mp2, all things point to ~200M t/s, but the benchmark and the press release say otherwise)

1) What?! Where do you come up with this stuff? The Android NDK has been available since Version 2, and supports native apps. Most Android games are coded in C/C++.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/overview.html

As an aside, you should really consider doing a bit of research before making assertions.

2) Even your update post seems to include figures lifted from wikipedia (or thin air). Example, imagination states the SGX543MP triangle througput at 35Mpolys/sec not 140M (number of cores not mentioned).
http://www.imgtec.com/news/Release/index.asp?NewsID=428 (below the lists)

The benchmarks seem to confirm this.

I hate myself. Just ordered a 16GB iPad2 for the wife. Why do I hate myself? Because I know within 2 minutes of unboxing the thing I'll be all over that mofo mumbling to myself "I hate you Steve Jobs, I hate you". Now, I still hate Uncle Steve and his iJail, but man, his worker ants sure know how to put out quality products.

As a side note, Xoom was a viable contender in my decision, and for a second I gave even Palm/HP a second look. Put in the end, Xoom was out of my price range, and having learned from Maemo5, I didn't want to be "experimenting" with an OS again so the WebOS was out.

Ok, who am I kidding, the iPad looks show shiny!

Hahaha... Apple has the secret sauce to attract the masses.

The specs, the UI, etc, are misdirection. Apple are pros in positioning products -- making people want them. Plus, they tend to be quality products, so they appeal to those driven by rational motives.

I hope you enjoy your new toy! I'm sure if you use it for its intended purpose (ie. the apps) it will be much more than a satisfactory experience.

Just let us know your thoughts!

@ysss: wherever he may be

Do you remember when I said that "if the iPad 2 had a retina display, I'd eat my hat?" This was based on the knowledge that desktops/laptops have trouble pushing these resolutions and I assumed accomplishing this with a mobile was unlikely.

Well, as it turns out, the display isn't retina-class, but I'm going to eat my hat anyhow, because this years GPU technology (SGX543/Mali400/Adreno220) are all capable of pushing 'retina' resolutions, even if it hasn't been yet been embodied in a device. I'm eating said hat because my very reasons for doubting its inclusion was flat-out wrong.

This reinforced a valuable lesson that I had forgotten in that instance. Just because something hasn't been done, doesn't mean that it can't be done.

Pass the butter...