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Tested: Why the iPad Pro really isn't as fast a laptop
- Retric 11y agoAn odd conclusion when it's beating many laptops. Also, an i3-4005U Processor (3M Cache, 1.70 GHz) is fairly topical of a new baseline laptop.
- Guvante 11y agoA $1k ARM platform beating a $300 x86 platform isn't interesting though. If things are close in price the difference isn't material but 3x the cost means comparing performance is almost meaningless, except to say "at least its better than".
- blinkingled 11y agoAlso beating at what exactly? If I loaded a page on the iPad Pro will I notice it being substantially quicker and interactive than if I did it on the x86? Synthetic benchmarks claiming this is faster than that are just that - they are used as a marketing tool not as anything that bears any relation to reality.
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- FireBeyond 11y agoI don't think this is a fair comparison to make. The same publication also publishes MacWorld. And, well, Apple and numerous followers -have- claimed or hinted at that, using some choice benchmarks. I don't think it should inherently imply bias.
- huac 11y agoDude, that's an ad
- delish 11y agoI upvoted the GP because I think it's important for content publishers to disclose who is advertising on their sites. I'm glad to know Intel advertises there. It doesn't mean the article is wrong, but it's a data point. Edit after downvotes: First, I use an adblocker, so I wouldn't have seen the ad. So I treat it like a potential hidden conflict-of-interest. Second, I think media sites should make explicit as much as possible--who advertises for them, and what influence the companies have on the media site. I'm sure they'll claim zero. Still I want it in writing. I don't see any incentive for media sites to do that. But it'd be nice.
- mikeash 11y agoIsn't the whole point of advertising to disclose it? If Intel was advertising but you couldn't tell, then Intel is getting ripped off.
- delish 11y agoI'm afraid of Intel's relationship with XYZ media site affecting the articles in XYZ. I get your point though. Reading myself again, I see that I sound silly.
- mikeash 11y agoYou have a good point too. I was being mildly facetious. Nothing guarantees you'll see the exact ads that represent a conflict of interest while you read a given article, after all. An explicit disclosure would be nice. Not only to ensure you know the conflict of interest is there, but to show that the publisher understands that it exists too.
- delinka 11y ago"...disclose who is advertising..." Because the ads themselves don't? If you don't know who's advertising, then it's not a very effective ad.
- swiley 11y agoIt really doesn't matter whether your computer is that fast. For heavy (scientific) number crunching you probably want to use a cloud provider or at least a dedicated machine. For pretty much anything else a two year old phone has plenty of power and it's just a matter of whether the proprietary OS that comes with it lets you run the software you want to run.
- liuliu 11y agoCannot emphasize enough how important it is nowadays for any serious work to have bigger RAM. For a machine with 128GiB memory, you can reside a lot of pre-computed results comfortably in RAM, and substantially speed up your computations.
- jkestner 11y agoCareful - "serious work" sounds like "true Scotsman". I think you're right that RAM will limit an iOS device's ability to deal with huge chunks of data, but to borrow a metaphor, that's increasingly a truck's task. I was going to use the example of large graphics files needing a lot of RAM, but as the design field has gone from print to web, the resolution demands are much less, too. Designers using desktop computers to design print publications are a dying breed.
- muddi900 11y agoBut graphics aren't tge only thing that require lots of memory. I can crash my 4th gen iPad with just opening one spreadsheet.
- mtrpcic 11y agoI disagree. You're painting modern computing as either hard number crunching or the most basic of browsing. Modern phones can barely handle WebGL, are abysmal at multitasking, and definitely aren't able to handle editing source code of the magnitude that I deal with daily at work. Then there's gaming, video editing, large scale image editing (read: Photoshop/Sketch), and many more. There are use cases for the in-between, and I'd argue they're a larger market segment than the two tails combined.
- thoughtsimple 11y agoThere are some really odd results in his benchmarks. For example, he has a Dell Venue 11 Pro with a Core-M beating a Surface Pro 4 with a Core-i5 on some video tests. It is unlikely that a Core-i5 loses out to a Core-M for anything. He has problems with video testing in general. It seems he couldn't figure out how to test 4K video editing on the iPad Pro. For reference, 9to5 Mac got it to work with some bugginess.
- jheriko 11y agodon't forget the graphics hardware and memory buses. these can have enormous impact on the performance of anything that gets rendered - even ignoring GPUs, if it is pure CPU rendering. i'm not saying he's not gotten something wrong, just that your reasoning is flawed based on my experience working with these things. measurement should always be trusted over 3rd party numbers imo - but only if you make the measurement yourself.
- williadc 11y agoIt does not surprise me that a Broadwell CoreM can have faster graphics than a Haswell Core i5. There was significantly more die area allotted to graphics in the Broadwell generation. It's also my understanding that significant effort was spent improving performance/watt in low-power scenarios (sorry, don't have a source for this; I heard it at work). Take a look at the difference in Die area: Haswell: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/7003/Screen%20Shot%202013-05-31%20at%207.59.16%20PM.png http://images.anandtech.com/doci/7003/Screen%20Shot%202013-0... Broadwell CoreM: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/intel-core-m-broadwell-y-die-diagram-map.jpg http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/intel-...
- Sanddancer 11y agoThe Core-M has more execution units (24) than the i5 (20), however, is clocked slower -- 1100 mhz vs 950 mhz. So, depending on how the graphics pipeline is being used, it's rather conceivable that certain tests will be faster on the lower speed processor. Especially with how intel's playing with what sort of graphics unit goes with what chip, counterintuitive results can and will happen.
- minimax 11y agoI'm not sure this is a great article, but I went down the rabbit hole anyway and eventually landed on some pretty cogent thoughts from Linus Torvalds regarding flaws in the Geekbench benchmarking methodology. http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=136526&curpostid=136703 http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=136526&curposti...
- muddi900 11y agoIt has been known for a while. Even the Geekbench payloads are different for mobile and desktop. However the benchmarks are irrelevant. Hardware performance means nothing in the face of application support and workflow integration for users. iOS is still an app centric interface. The reason iPad pro cannot replace my laptop is because my workflow is centered around files.
- justifier 11y agoyou see code with tons of indirect function calls, lots of wrapper functions (ie one function massages some arguments a bit and then just calls another function), and no, it's not inlined because it's of ten all about interfacing between different library levels (webkit, various font rendering libraries, low- level drivers for "in memory" vs "on screen" yadda yadda) can anyone speak to these criticisms? i often write code that starts as this: function ae(arr) { //do //first //something to arr //do // second // something to arr //do // third // something to arr return arr } then refactor it as: function first(arr) { // do // something return arr } function sec(arr) { // do // something return arr } function third(arr) { // do // something return arr } function ae(arr) { arr=first(arr) arr=second(arr) arr=third(arr) return arr } is this what torvalds is referring to? i thought i had done 'extensive' research on the perf burden of function calls and found them to be negligible so i decided to refactor for the sake of readability what's best practices in regard to indirect function calls, wrapper functions, and inlining?
- bobbles 11y ago"The benchmark has two performance modules, which give you an idea of how fast the device would be in web browsing and email. The result for iPad Pro is tepid, with performance just beating the Nexus 9 and its Tegra K1. " OK then... just how 'slow' are these tablets at browsing? Considering my ipad mini 1 isnt 'slow' at web browsing, does this matter? I've never even noticed the speed being an issue. This article basically amounts to "those benchmarks are stupid! look at these benchmarks!!"
- mcguire 11y agoSo you have your lies, your damned lies, your statistics and your benchmarks.
- Scuds 11y agoJust for kicks I ran this on a few devices http://browserbench.org/JetStream/ http://browserbench.org/JetStream/ An iphone 6 gets ~65 iphone 6s gets ~120 ipad pro ~130 new Macbook Pro (safari, haswell i7) ~210 Not scientific, but last years phone was half as powerful, in two years the 7s will also have a jump in performance. I don't think an intel system will have anywhere near as large as a jump since we're bumping against the limit of how fast a single core can be.
- jtchang 11y agoWell learned a new acronym today. I assume L1 I$ means Layer 1 pipeline cache?
- wmf 11y agoI$ = instruction cache
- peteretep 11y ago> Executive Editor, PCWorld Next up, the editor of Oil&Gas Weekly on why Tesla cars get such poor performance.
- jheriko 11y agonot even an argument, but had me in stitches. :) bravo
- jheriko 11y agoi could be wrong, but i came to the same conclusion in a different way as i first heard the statement made during the announce about the power being comparable with laptops. as soon as he said whatever high percentage of laptops it was i was thinking: "clever. people who care enough to watch this are likely to care enough about hardware to have high power laptops - as apple fanboys some macbook or other. they probably don't even realise what kind of laptops people buy in large volume and how little horsepower they have - nor what kind of proportion of the wider market macbooks actually make up - iirc around 1 in 20, which is probably enough to exclude most of them from '90% of laptops bought' over any given period, because they are clustered up near the top end of the range." i guessed the performance might be similar to last years bottom end macbook. there is also the programmer inside of me who is skeptical from experience working on low-level optimisations for x86/64 and arm (various 5/6/7) code on various platforms... apple are genuises at marketting imo. the cult, the fanboys, the elitism, the beauty... all of it culminates in making it difficult for people to think objectively about their products. so i'll not be surprised if the idea of the iPad pro being a laptop killer doesn't die - and maybe even comes into fruition. it doesn't actually have to outperform anything if people believe that it does...
- mrcrassic 11y agoLinus's comments make a lot of sense but the fact of the matter is this: a number is a number is a number. If I run the same "flawed" benchmark suite on last year's iPhone 5, it will tell me that, yes, its CPU is indeed slower than that of a 6S. The tests might not holistically represent real-world usage but they output just enough data to tell me quantitatively how much better one phone performs over another in a vacuum. The "real" benchmark; actually running automation on a cross section of phones against a few popular apps, would probably be a more useful test. But Anandtrch and their cohorts don't seem to agree.
- dikaiosune 11y agoSure, measuring one iPhone against the next makes some sense with synthetic browser benchmarks, but I think where the hype breaks down is in using that browser benchmark to say that the iPad Pro can squash any other portable device out there. At the very least these benchmark results indicate that it's (surprise!) more of a mixed bag than has been reported. Regarding the need for a "real" benchmark, from the article: "While Geek Bench 3 attempts to create what its makers think is an accurate measure of CPU performance using seconds-long “real world” algorithms, BAPCo’s approach is actually more “real world.” BAPCo’s consortium of mostly hardware makers set out to create workloads across all the different platforms that would simulate what a person does, such as actually editing a photo with HDR, browsing the web, or sending email." The author goes on to concede that they have custom apps for each platform to accomplish this task, but it seems that the TabletMark developers are aware of the exact issue you raise.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoInteresting article. I am still waiting to get my hands on an iPad Pro to compare it to the Surface Book clipboard. I am primarily interested in comparing the drawing performance but there are lots of ways you can make a more dedicated system perform its intended task better than a more general system. When I bought the Surface book I understood that I was paying a premium for that generality.
- melted 11y agoI've tried both quite extensively. FWIW, iPad Pro _feels_ faster and more fluid. Still not the right device for me, but I had no complaints wrt performance. I did not buy iPad Pro though: not the right device for what I do. I did buy the Surface Book, but took it back to the store a couple of days later. It was bluescreening a couple of times a day seemingly due to driver issues. Its UI performance was choppy as well, particularly scrolling non-WinRT apps such as e.g. Chrome or Firefox. This was basically the top of the line Core i7 model, so I expect that things are even worse with the lower end models.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoMine too is the top of the line one, FWIW, the November WIN10 update fixed 90% of the early issues. Generally it doesn't do well when it has a 'reboot required' update queued and its waiting to do it. So far a full reboot which allows the update to process brings it back. I have not had scrolling issues on Firefox or Edge.
- melted 11y agoI intend to try another SB 6-9 months down the line. I think the hardware shows a lot of promise once they iron out the kinks.
- wlesieutre 11y agoFirefox and Chrome are frankly not good at scrolling smoothly in step with fingers. I use FF on my desktop and phone, but run IE on my Surface because of this. Chrome is tolerable (smooth, but the momentum is wrong). Firefox sucks. Haven't checked in on the Mac versions lately, but I remember the same experience in FF there a couple of years ago. It feels like scrolling was designed entirely around moving in 3-line chunks per click of the mouse wheel, with some smoothing done for longer continuous spins. Then they tried to bolt incrementless trackpad scrolling on top of that and it went really poorly.
- senthilnayagam 11y agoit is not a threat to x86 laptop vendors, which is the vast majority and OEM driven what people need to realize is that apple is not becoming a CPU vendor threatening intel, but it has reached a point where next macbook air can be a A9X or AXX, and macbook pro will not be too far away in future. interesting part would be these chips might be manufactured by Intel and not Samsung or TSMC
- xlayn 11y agoThe thing is... is actually killing the pc, it doesn't matter what anyone does, it's the king... for the people who check twitter... "writes" and post to facebook... Disclaimer... it's ironic, I'm actually very happy to see this happening, why it's the mistery, could it be apple shinning aura fading away? less money to throw to make it incredible? or just 6 or 7 years is the time to get someone to post some kind of results like this? I tell people that pc is the most generic and more powerful way of computing we have, when in doubt open vmware, launch macosx, inside macosx run the ipad emulator, inside of it the browser test and see if you can replicate on the ipad.
- xlayn 11y agoNow... yes it flawed for the reason there is no way to test the whole system in the same way because every system is different... Or said in other way all of them are different and serve different purpose... hence no way one killing the other.
- pacomerh 11y agoThe user interaction isn't as fast because its a touch screen device mixed with an external keyboard in a device where the OS is still not optimized to be used as a laptop. The OS is meant to be used as a simplified touch device. For many reasons, but one very obvious one is file management.
- gilgoomesh 11y agoThis article seems really half-hearted in places. The author couldn't read the iMovie requirements enough to run a movie encoding test on the iPad? Also, the author is against using SHA2 for tests (since it uses optimized CPU instructions on iPad) but has no problem with ZIP which may use any number of SSE instructions on Intel?
- monochromatic 11y agoEven the title. "as fast a laptop"
- ant6n 11y agoI had trouble making it through this wall of text that's not getting to the point. Does the article in the end actually explain why the iPad is slower?
- lowpro 11y agoThe graphs speak for themselves, you don't have to read any of it as the author only explains the number of graphs which are simple and readable.