The fine folks over at Bare Feats ran some preliminary benchmarks on the new iPad this weekend, comparing it to the iPad 2, original iPad, and iPhone 4S. While processor-focused tests showed no speed improvement over the iPad 2, the new quad-core graphics capability of the 2012 iPad gave it an impressive 60 percent boost over last year’s model.
For GPU testing, Bare Feats used the GLBenchmark 2.1 Egypt test. Due to the 2012 iPad’s significantly higher resolution, the test was run in offscreen mode to level the playing field and allow for a direct comparison of the GPU’s computing power.
Chart by The Mac Observer from Bare Feats data.
The 2012 iPad’s new quad-core graphics allow it to easily best the previous iPad in graphical power. Keep in mind, however, that this is an offscreen test, meaning that the 2012 iPad’s higher resolution isn’t a factor here. What this means for real-world applications is that games and other graphics-heavy apps won’t run 60 percent faster than their “non-retina” equivalents on an iPad 2, but they should run fairly well at “retina” resolutions while looking significantly better than their lower resolution counterparts.
Chart by The Mac Observer from Bare Feats data.
Processor-focused tests unsurprisingly showed little difference between the two most recent versions of iPads. As we discussed last week, the 2012 iPad’s processor is a dual core chip running at the same frequency as the iPad 2. Therefore, CPU-heavy tasks will see negligible improvements on the new hardware.
Chart by The Mac Observer from Bare Feats data.
Going forward, be sure to bookmark Bare Feats, as they promise to soon be testing the download and upload speeds of the cellular data-enabled iPad models.