14 DAY TRIAL // We still need to see a comparison between NVIDIA's Tegra 4 and the 8-core Exynos 5 Octa from Samsung, maybe even Apple's current iPad processor, but at least we have a benchmark run against Tegra 3 now.
Engadget ran some tests on the Tegra 4 Wayne platform from NVIDIA, then compared the results to the scores of Tegra 3-based items (Sony Xperia Tablet S and ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity).
They didn't have tablets with the latest software installed, so the comparison isn't perfect.
Still, there is essentially no chance that up-to-date operating systems and apps would decrease the difference much. The four-fold advantage of Tegra 4 over Tegra 3 is too large.
Indeed, in Quadrant (v2), AnTuTu, SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms) and CF-Bench, Tegra 4 did, on average, four times better.
A reference Wayne tablet was compared against the two aforementioned slates.
For those who want the numbers, the score in Quadrant (v2) was of 16,436, versus 4,349 and 4,685, respectively.
AnTuTu returned 36,305 points, quite a bit beyond the 11,301 of Sony's tablet and the 12,027 of ASUS' item.
In CF-Bench, the reference Tegra 4 slate managed 41,325, while Sony's Tablet S squeezed 12,625 and ASUS's Transformer Pad Infinity only got 7,874.
As for SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms), it is the only one where lower numbers are better. Wayne got 499 ms, while Tablet S got 1,608 and Transformer Pad Infinity returned 2,012.
NVIDIA and its various tablet and smartphone partners will launch and start shipping Tegra 4-based electronic gadgets in July this year (2013). Software might be further optimized by that point, so we won't be too shocked if later reviews publish better performance than this.
HP Chromebooks powered by the platforms may be launched as well, along with NVIDIA own-brand items. After all, NVIDIA's CEO believes in tablets “wholeheartedly.”