Apple’s new iPhone 15 Pro has a much better A17 Pro chip inside. At first, I was not happy with Apple’s claims that it’s only 10% faster for one task and 20% better for graphics than the older A16 chip.
But, we got some new secret test results, and they show that Apple was not telling the whole truth. These results reveal that the phone is actually much faster when you use apps and play games.
In this video, I’ll talk about these test scores, explain what they mean, and why they matter for you. It seems like Apple said it’s not much faster, but it’s actually quite a bit faster.
When they said it’s only 10% better, the real test showed it’s just 9.3% better, which is not very good compared to previous iPhones.
But then, we got another test result that showed a huge improvement, with a score of 2999 for one task, which is 19% better. After that, we got more test results, and on average, it’s about 2850 points for one task, which is a 13% improvement. This is better than what Apple said at first.
In terms of multi-core performance, things get a little interesting here. Initially, the scores started at around 7192 points, which was just a small 10.5% increase compared to the A16.
But then, it shot up to a high of 7779, giving us a pretty big 22% gain. Since then, it’s been consistently hitting around 7300, which is a decent 14% boost. This all makes sense because the core layout is pretty much the same as before.
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Now, looking at the graphics side, Apple said they’d give us a 20% graphics performance bump, which seemed kind of modest since they just added one more GPU core. That’s basically a 20% increase in cores, and it made me a bit disappointed.
But guess what? Some new leaked tests from GFX Bench show a surprising twist. In the Aztec Ruins Normal Tier Off-Screen test, the A17 Pro chip pulled off an impressive 45% jump compared to the A16. That’s way more than what Apple claimed, and it’s got me pretty surprised.
These new benchmarks from GFX Bench are known for telling us how well our gadgets handle games, and the A17 Pro chip’s performance boost is pretty unexpected. It’s like a little secret Apple didn’t tell us about, and it’s quite exciting for folks who love gaming on their devices.
In the tests, not every result was fantastic. For instance, Man Patton saw a 31.5% improvement, while the Aztec ruins high tier only showed a 27% increase.
Nonetheless, these outcomes exceeded our initial expectations. If you’re wondering why there’s such a significant performance gap between Apple’s claims and what we’re observing, there are a couple of good explanations.
Firstly, Apple appears to be using Geekbench as their benchmark for comparing graphics performance. We’ve recently obtained scores for this as well. From these scores, it seems the average score for the A17 Pro is around 27,400 points, resulting in about a 23% increase.
While this is respectable, it falls short of the substantial gains we saw in GFX Bench. Perhaps the Geekbench graphics test isn’t as well optimized in the current 6.2 version.
Secondly, those additional GPU upgrades Apple mentioned may not have as dramatic an impact on benchmarked graphics numbers as they do on real-world gaming performance. Gaming benchmarks like GFX Bench and 3DMark’s Wildlife Extreme provide a much better simulation of real gaming experiences.
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The new GPU changes seem much more reasonable to me because they might improve gaming efficiency and performance behind the scenes, similar to how Apple’s unified memory architecture boosted gaming on M series Mac chips compared to Intel.
These changes in the A17 Pro-GPU are worth noting if you haven’t heard about them. One of the key updates is Metal FX, which was previously only available on Apple’s M1 and M2 chips but is now supported on the A17 Pro.
It’s like a new tool for game developers that can make games look better at higher resolutions, like 4K, without needing a lot of graphics power. This means smoother gameplay without sacrificing image quality.
To give you an idea of what Metal FX can do, consider this example: In quality mode, it gave a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Max chip a 35% boost in FPS when playing Resident Evil Village, reaching a playable 70 FPS. In performance mode, it more than doubled the FPS, achieving an impressive 111% increase and surpassing the performance of an RTX 3070 graphics card.
Metal FX taps into the neural engine, which is now twice as powerful, benefiting the GPU even more.
In summary, these new GPU changes, particularly Metal FX on the A17 Pro, promise better gaming experiences by making games look great at high resolutions without requiring a ton of graphics horsepower. It’s a significant step forward, and the real-world performance improvements are quite impressive, especially when compared to a dedicated graphics card like the RTX 3070.
The A17 Pro now includes mesh shaders with a new GPU shader architecture, which essentially optimizes the pipeline of graphics shading by combining multiple steps from a traditional GPU pipeline into fewer tasks or steps.
This improvement enhances graphics performance and reduces the GPU’s power consumption, thanks to increased efficiency.
Additionally, the A17 Pro features dedicated hardware ray tracing cores that boost ray tracing performance by four times. This enhancement allows the iPhone 15 Pro to run incredibly high-quality AAA games for the first time, reaching console-level gaming performance, as stated by Apple.
With these announcements, Apple officially entered the AAA game market and sent a message to game developers to start supporting Apple silicon on devices like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Notably, the Mac will receive significant ray tracing upgrades with the introduction of the M3 line of chips.
Furthermore, this positions the iPhone as the best phone in the world for gaming, offering the highest quality and most consistent frame rates. This development will make it challenging for other Android phone manufacturers to compete.
So hopefully you enjoy this video. Thanks for watching and if you enjoyed this video, don’t forget to give it a thumbs up and share it with your friends. Stay tuned for more exciting tech videos. See you in the next one!