For the past several days I've been playing around with Futuremark's new 3DMark for Android, as well as Kishonti's GL and DXBenchmark 2.7. All of these tests are scheduled to be available on Android, iOS, Windows RT and Windows 8 - giving us the beginning of a very wonderful thing: a set of benchmarks that allow us to roughly compare mobile hardware across (virtually) all OSes. The computing world is headed for convergence in a major way, and with benchmarks like these we'll be able to better track everyone's progress as the high performance folks go low power, and the low power folks aim for higher performance. The previous two articles I did on the topic were really focused on comparing smartphones to smartphones, and...
The Great Equalizer Part 2: Surface Pro vs. Android Devices in 3DMark
While we're still waiting for Windows RT and iOS versions of the latest 3DMark, there is one cross-platform comparison we can make: Ivy Bridge/Clover Trail to the Android devices...
57 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/2/2013
3DMark for Android: Performance Preview
As I mentioned in our coverage of GL/DXBenchmark 2.7, with the arrival of Windows RT/8 we'd finally see our first truly cross-platform benchmarks. Kishonti was first out of the...
54 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 4/2/2013_carousel.png)
The Great Equalizer: Apple, Android & Windows Tablet GPUs Compared using GL/DXBenchmark 2.7
For the past few years we have been lamenting the state of benchmarks for mobile platforms. The constant refrain from those who had been around long enough to remember...
83 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/31/2013
Apple TV 2013 (A1469) Short Review: Analysis of a New A5
The Apple TV is an incredibly relevant device today. It’s Apple’s attempt to augment the Netflixes and Hulu Pluses of the world with an on-demand cable TV alternative. Other...
45 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/15/2013
Imagination Technologies Confirms PowerVR SGX 544 IP used in Exynos 5 Octa
ARM was being unusually coy when talking about the GPU IP used in Samsung's recently announced Exynos 5 Octa. We eventually found out why: unlike the Exynos 5 Dual...
25 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/12/2013
Intel's Clover Trail+: Dual-Core CPU and Graphics Unveiled at MWC 2013
We find ourselves at another Mobile World Congress, discussing another Intel Atom based smartphone SoC. While last year we were talking about faster and lower performing versions of the...
18 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/25/2013
NVIDIA Tegra 4 Architecture Deep Dive, Plus Tegra 4i, Icera i500 & Phoenix Hands On
Ever since NVIDIA arrived on the SoC scene, it has done a great job of introducing its ultra mobile SoCs. Tegra 2 and 3 were both introduced with a...
75 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 2/24/2013
Samsung Details Exynos 5 Octa Architecture & Power at ISSCC '13
At CES this year Samsung introduced the oddly named Exynos 5 Octa SoC, one of the first Cortex A15 SoCs to implement ARM's big.LITTLE architecture. Widely expected to be...
52 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/20/2013
Tegra 4 Shipment Date: Still Q2 2013
Last night NVIDIA's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, stated that shipments of its Tegra 4 SoC to customers would begin in Q2. A few outlets incorrectly assumed this meant Q2 of...
2 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/14/2013
The Tegra 4 GPU, NVIDIA Claims Better Performance Than iPad 4
At CES last week, NVIDIA announced its Tegra 4 SoC featuring four ARM Cortex A15s running at up to 1.9GHz and a fifth Cortex A15 running at between 700...
60 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/14/2013
Intel Brings Core Down to 7W, Introduces a New Power Rating to Get There: Y-Series SKUs Demystified
For all of modern Intel history, it has specified a TDP rating for all of its silicon. The TDP rating is given at a specific max core temperature (Tj_MAX...
55 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/14/2013
Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa: Powered by PowerVR SGX 544MP3, not ARM's Mali
At CES, Samsung announced its Exynos 5 Octa SoC featuring four ARM Cortex A7s and four ARM Cortex A15s. Unusually absent from the announcement was any mention of the...
42 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 1/13/2013
Imagination Demonstrates PowerVR Series6 Rogue on LG's H13 SoC
I stopped by Imagination Technologies at CES 2013 and talked about their upcoming GPU IP blocks and a few recently announced SoCs, and one demo caught my eye running...
6 by Brian Klug on 1/12/2013
Hands On with the Huawei Ascend W1, Ascend D2, and Ascend Mate
There hasn't been much in the way of mobile handset news out of CES 2013 this year, save some announcements by Huawei this morning. I didn't get a chance...
5 by Brian Klug on 1/8/2013
Qualcomm's Next-Gen Krait 400 & Krait 300 Announced in Snapdragon 800 & 600 SoCs
We've been hinting at this for a while, both on the Podcast and in our most recent power analysis piece, but today it's very official: Qualcomm is announcing the...
22 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 1/7/2013
More Details on NVIDIA's Tegra 4 & i500: 5th core is A15, 28nm HPL, UE Category 3 LTE
We just finished NVIDIA's CES press conference where it introduced the Tegra 4 SoC and Shield mobile gaming console. Immediately following the press event we snagged some more information...
34 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 1/7/2013
NVIDIA CES 2013 Press Event: Live Blog
We just sat down for NVIDIA's Pre-CES press event. Things are running a bit late now, but we expect the event to start in the next 15 minutes. Keep...
42 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 1/6/2013NVIDIA's Pre-CES Press Conference: Live Webcast Starts At 8pm PST
Even though CES doesn't officially start until Tuesday, things are already kicking off in Las Vegas. The Storage Visions 2013 conference runs through Monday, and meanwhile a number of...
1 by Ryan Smith on 1/6/2013
The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 13
We're back! In our first podcast of 2013 we go over some of the best products of 2012 and Haswell/ValleyView launch schedules. Brian talks about Field Test being removed...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/6/2013