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iPhone 5 benchmarks surface: Performance doubles

The iPhone 5's A6 chip could be a performance monster if Geekbench results are legitimate.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
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iPhone 5 packs the fastest Apple A series chip to date, according to benchmarks posted by Geekbench.
iPhone 5 packs the fastest Apple A series chip to date, according to benchmarks posted by Geekbench. Apple

The iPhone 5's A6 processor appears to be roughly twice as fast as any chip in an existing iOS product, if results posted by Geekbench prove to be accurate.

The results show a score of 1,601, beating the dual-core A5 and A5X processors in the iPhone 4s and third-generation iPad (Retina), respectively.

Previous benchmarks of the Retina iPad show a score of 794 (iPad with 3G/4G). The iPhone 4S posted a score of 631.

If these iPhone 5 benchmarks are legitimate, they would match Apple's claims. "With the new A6 chip, just about everything you do on iPhone 5 is noticeably faster -- up to twice as fast compared with the A5 chip," Apple states on its iPhone 5 features page.

Geekbench results point to a 1GHz clock speed, an increase from the A5's 800MHz. Because that's not a huge jump in the chip's frequency, chip review site Anandtech said some of that extra performance may come from doing more instructions per clock cycle.

In short, if the chip is more efficient at processing instructions, it adds performance irrespective of clock speed.

The A6 chip is also thought to be the first Apple chip made on Samsung's new 32-nanometer manufacturing process. Typically when a chip moves to a more advanced manufacturing process, it gets faster and/or more power efficient -- or both.

And the A6 adopts a more unique Apple design with a faster graphics engine, according to preliminary analysis. And also boasts faster memory. Both aspects would contribute to performance.

For reference, the Samsung Galaxy S III with a Samsung Exynos 4412 quad-core chip rated at 1.4GHz landed at the top of Android benchmarks.

[Via MacRumors ].

Updated on September 22 at 5:15 p.m. PDT: updating Geekbench score for Samsung Galaxy S III.

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