NVIDIA Challenges Apple's iPad Benchmarks

MojoKid writes "At the iPad unveiling last week, Apple flashed up a slide claiming that the iPad 2 was 2x as fast as Nvidia's Tegra 3, while the new iPad would be 4x more powerful than Team Green's best tablet. NVIDIA's response boils down to: 'it's flattering to be compared to you, but how about a little data on which tests you ran and how you crunched the numbers?' NVIDIA is right to call Apple out on the meaningless nature of such a comparison, and the company is likely feeling a bit dogpiled given that TI was waving unverified webpage benchmarks around less than two weeks ago. That said, the Imagination Technologies (PowerVR) GPUs built into the iPad 2 and the new iPad both utilize tile-based rendering. In some ways, 2012 is a repeat of 2001 — memory bandwidth is at an absolute premium because adding more bandwidth has a direct impact on power consumption. The GPU inside NVIDIA's Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 is a traditional chip, which means it's subject to significant overdraw, especially at higher resolutions. Apple's comparisons may be bogus, but Tegra 3's bandwidth issue they indirectly point to aren't. It will be interesting to see NVIDIA's next move and what their rumored Tegra 3+ chip might bring."

This is funny.

[imagined.by]

The irony in this is that this is coming from a company that presented chunks of wood as their next-gen graphics cards.

Re:This is funny.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The irony in this is that this is coming from a company that presented chunks of wood as their next-gen graphics cards.

Hey! Some of us care about 'Green Computing' here, you earth-raping performance whore!

Re:Last Tegra device I'll ever buy

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Well don't you worry, last week Apple announced Samsung's next tablet!

Re:Don't worry, Nvidia!

[MisterMidi]

I don't know why you need a citation of what fuzzyfuzzyfungus wrote, but here you go:

Just ask Intel about Apple's benchmarking strategy: For years, the finest in graphic design publicly asserted that PPC was so bitchin' that it was pretty much just letting Intel and x86 live because killing your inferiors is bad taste. Then, one design win, and x86 is suddenly eleventy-billion percent faster than that old-and-busted PPC legacy crap.

Or ask Amazon: Amazon releases 'Kindle' e-reader device. His Steveness declares "Nobody reads". And now Apple is pushing books, newspapers, and their own pet proprietary publishing platform...

Cheer up, emo Nvidia, all you have to do is sell Apple a Tegra N SoC, or even just the rights to include your GPU in their AN SoC, and Tim Cook will personally explain to the world that PowerVR GPUs are slow, weak, make you 30% less creative and are produced entirely from conflict minerals.