14 DAY TRIAL // When the iPhone 5S came out, it was a hefty improvement from what came before it, but the story might not be the same in the case of Apple’s latest spawn, the iPhone 6.
According to the folks at Rightware, the first benchmarks are in and they show a less glamorous story than you might want to hear.
iPhone 6 GPU performance is not that impressive compared to the iPhone 5S
Judging by what they show, the iPhone 6’s new A8 processor might not be a big upgrade compared to the A7 chip that fueled the previous Apple smartphone iteration.
This verdict makes sense, especially since Apple hasn’t made a big fuss about the A8 chip throughout the whole product launch event. It appears that the tech giant had good reasons to do so.
The set of benchmarks concentrate on GPU performance, but before you say anything, we’d like to point that they don't paint the whole story.
On top of that, it should be noted that Apple hasn’t said what kind of GPU lives inside their A8 processor, but chances are it’s quite similar to the PowerVR G6430 one found in the A7.
Getting down and dirty with the actual numbers, the new A8 chip scored 21,204 points in the graphics performance tests, which is a tad more than the 20,254 points snatched by the iPhone 5S.
Apple has said that GPU speed will double
Apple has claimed that the new A8 is based on a new 20-nanometer design and performance is expected to be bumped up with 25% compared to the A7. While for GPU, things were supposed to double in speed, but as you can see, the benchmark results don’t reflect that at all.
Now for a comparison with early models of the iPhone to show you how the iPhone 5S ruled over previous models.
The iPhone 5 scored 10,973 on the same test, while the iPhone 4S managed to hit only a meager 5,034 points. So you can see the discrepancy.
We can also go a little further and compare these results with the scores of other competing smartphones. For example, the Adreno 330 GPU in the Lumia 1520 managed to snatch 25,346 points, while the Sony Xperia Z2 got 25,174 and the Galaxy S5 got 23,501.
The conditions under which the Benchmark X test was performed are not known, but more details and testing will probably follow in the upcoming weeks. On top of that, it would be nice to see full iPhone 6 benchmarks, but we're pretty sure we won't have to wait too long to see them.
A similar GPU performance test has not been performed on the larger iPhone 6 Plus, a phone with a higher resolution display.