The New iPad vs. ASUS' Transformer Pad Infinity in Specs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 7, 2012 1:47 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Apple
- iPad
- Mobile
- Trade Shows
ASUS actually beat Apple to the punch in announcing a greater than 1080p ARM based tablet, but today we have most of the specs on Apple's new iPad. How do the two stack up? The table below summarizes what we know thus far:
Tablet Specification Comparison | ||||||
ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity | Apple's new iPad (2012) | Apple iPad 2 | ||||
Dimensions | 263 x 180.8 x 8.5mm | 241.2 x 185.7 x 9.4mm | 241.2 x 185.7 x 8.8mm | |||
Display | 10.1-inch 1920 x 1200 Super IPS+ | 9.7-inch 2048 x 1536 IPS | 9.7-inch 1024 x 768 IPS | |||
Weight | 586g | 652g | 601g | |||
Processor |
3G/4G LTE - 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 (2 x Krait) WiFi - 1.6GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 T33 (4 x Cortex A9) |
Apple A5X (2 x Cortex A9, PowerVR SGX 543MP4?) |
1GHz Apple A5 (2 x Cortex A9, PowerVR SGX543MP2) | |||
Connectivity | WiFi , Optional 4G LTE | WiFi , Optional 4G LTE | WiFi , Optional 3G | |||
Memory | 1GB | ? | 512MB | |||
Storage | 16GB - 64GB | 16GB - 64GB | 16GB | |||
Battery | 25Whr | 42.5Whr | 25Whr | |||
Pricing | $599 - $799 est | $499 - $829 | $399, $529 |
63 Comments
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tayb - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
I disagree. The dual core Cortex A9 is plenty fast to run the OS and any of the applications but at those resolutions a fast GPU becomes much more important. Most of the things you do on an iPad are visual anyway. There is a reason Apple is focusing on powerful GPUs.zorxd - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Let see...Facebook
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None of these are graphic intensive and is probably 95% of what people are doing on tablet. You need a little GPU power to decode 1080p h264 but the iPad2 was more than fast enough for this. On the other hand a faster CPU helps you doing all this stuff faster (faster application launch, etc.). Having a faster GPU won't play your 1080p movie faster. The only case where it helps is in 3D games. This is the same GPU used in the Playstation Vita, a gaming device.
The iPhone 4 had a slow GPU for its resolution and nobody really cared. The next iPad will have a faster CPU.
GPU will probably reach a ceiling at some point, just like on PCs where most people don't care about it, and prefer saving $100 even if it mean having 10x slower graphics.
hackbod - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
When you are talking about these screen resolutions, the GPU is *tremendously* important. And the part of that which is really REALLY important is the memory bandwidth of the GPU.Just think: a 2048x1536 display is 12MB for a single frame buffer! When you are looking the memory bandwidth of these devices, you are talking about how many times it can touch each pixel at 60fps, and this number end up being a small integer (often very small).
So, to scroll a list in one of your non-GPU-intensive simple applications, you need to touch almost every pixel at least two times, maybe a third time to composite to the display, and add any fancy layering and you are hitting them a few more times. You quickly hit the point where you are saturating the memory buss and can't hit 60fps scrolling no matter what you do.
hackbod - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Btw, the more limited GPU of the original iPad is why it updated the display at 30fps.harbourcoat - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
well the iPad3 has to shift >1mpx more on screen than the infinity. so that 4x advantage is diluted in the wash.stktheft - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
I hope you do know that the Infinity GPU is 12 core ( as opposed to the iPad's 4 core)The Infinity CPU on wifi only model is 4 core, iPad is 2 core. On the face of it, there is no way iPad would outperform the Infinity. Lets wait and see though
Greg512 - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
Certainly the Infinity will be faster CPU-wise, but I wouldn't be so confident about the GPU side of the equation. Cores don't mean much when comparing different architectures. After all, a GPU can have hundreds of 'cores,' but they are not equivalent to cores found in Intel and AMD processors. It seems to me the new iPad will enjoy a sizable graphics advantage over its competition, given that Tegra 3 did not greatly outperform the iPad 2 in terms of graphics.ImSpartacus - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
I think they might be talking about graphics performance. Apple has always placed more emphasis on graphics performance than CPU performance. Their CPU cores are always underclocked and their GPUs are always enormous, so nothing has really changed.zorxd - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
What has changed is that Apple now puts even more emphasis on the GPU.Also the iPhone 4 had a relatively weak GPU for the time.
michael2k - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Anand has already published numbers showing the Tegra 3 is roughly equivalent to last year's A5 CPU.If they added 4 GPUs per core (for 8 cores), then it probably is 4 times faster, at least with regards to the GPU.