Apple iPad 2 Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Brian Klug & Vivek Gowri on March 12, 2011 6:01 AM ESTThe GPU: PowerVR SGX 543MP2
There are no spoilers here but the PowerVR SGX 535 in the original A4 is out, replaced by the new PowerVR SGX 543MP2. The 543 as a building block has a bit over twice the peak floating point throughput of the SGX 535. The MP2 just means there are two of these 543s working in tandem. The result is what Apple uses as the basis for their "9x faster" GPU claims. In practice the improvement should be less than that, but it's still enormous.
We've got GPU performance data coming, but I thought I'd take a slightly different route and show what one developer is using the extra horsepower offered by the A5 for.
Epic Games is a familiar face around these parts. We've used games powered by their Unreal Engine in our reviews for years now. More recently Epic has made a splash in the iOS world with the release of its Citadel demo and eventually Infinity Blade.
In time for the launch Epic updated Infinity Blade to have some special enhancements for iPad 2 owners. Rather than simply deliver a higher framerate for iPad 2 users, Epic enabled higher resolution textures and anti-aliasing. The resulting boost in image quality is astounding, particularly on the iPad 2's 1024 x 768 screen:
Mouse over to see Infinity Blade on the iPad 2
There's far more detail in the character models as well as the environment. Lighting looks improved and the AA is definitely appreciated.
Mouse over to see Infinity Blade on the iPad 2
The gallery below has a bunch of side by side shots showing the improvements made to Infinity Blade for the iPad 2 vs. what you get when you run the game on a first generation iPad.
As we mentioned before, the A5 (and iPad 2) are about enabling developers. In a year's time the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 will be found in the majority of iOS tablets on the market - and games are just going to get prettier from there.
Update: We've published a look at the performance of the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 running GLBenchmark 2.0 here. If you want a teaser, it's good:
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name99 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Depends on what you mean by "properly".In the city iPad location services work astonishingly well. God knows how they do it, I guess the SkyHook database is just huge.
On the other hand, if you plan to go hiking with your iPad, you might be disappointed.
One way to test this (if you have a mac) is to see how well your mac provides location. Grab a location-aware app (google maps in Safari is an easy choice) and ask it to locate you. (Note that you need WiFi to be on for this to work usefully, so if you're doing it at a desktop mac, make sure WiFi is on.)
If you have a portable, try it in a few different places. Are you happy with the results? Because that's about what you'll get from iPad without GPS.
Mr Alpha - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
I don't believe it can. According to another famous Steve Jobs email iOS doesn't support getting internet access via tethering. On the other hand iOS 4.3 added hotspot to iPhone 4, which you should be able to use to get internet to a WiFi only iPad.solgae1784 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
It looks like AT&T will allow iPad 3G to be used as a personal hotspot. Not sure about Verizon.http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=19295&cd...
ATC - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Yes you can. I have an iPhone 4 with 4.3 installed and with the new HotSpot feature of iOS 4.3 you can do just that. However, in the US my understanding is that you need a tethering data plan and AT&T or Verizon will charge you more to activate the HotSpot feature. Of course you can always get around that by JB your iPhone.I'm in Canada and the HotSpot feature works here for free and works great (I've been using it for the past 3 days to share my 6GB data with my iPhone). But there are a few things to consider when doing this. One, your iPhone's battery runs down much faster (it's using 3G data and Wifi at the same time). Second, while I haven't tested this, I think you lose location service/GPS on your iPad because only the 3G iPad has a GPS (I could be wrong though).
3DoubleD - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
I would be cautious here. I bought a Kindle with only WiFi thinking I could just tether to Android phone for internet access on the go... I was WRONG.In the case of the Kindle, the WiFi chip does not support connecting to non-router based wireless networks. So the Kindle cannot connect to any wireless network that you created with your phone, tablet, or laptop.
So, the answer to your question is dependent on the wireless chipset used in the iPad. My recommendation is to find proof that someone has successfully tethered an iPhone with an iPad2 before wasting $800.
silverblue - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Definite improvement there; can't wait for HDR and more shader effects such as bump mapping to appear in mobile games. I knew years ago that the SGX was capable of AA but it's not something we've really seen up until now.I wonder how much faster this implementation is as compared to the SGX540 found in Hummingbird?
rish95 - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Well Imagination Tech says a dual core SGX543 is over 4X faster than the SGX 540.So even though the iPad is at 1024 x 768 you can still expect 60% higher frame rate, but the power per pixel is much higher.
tipoo - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
Well that's disappointing. I hardly expected it to replace a dedicated camera, but with an iPhone 4-ish camera and the processing power it has it could have allowed for some neat things. But if the camera sucks, meh.Also, whats that vintage camera shown in all the test shoots?
Sarah_ - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - link
It's a Kine-Exakta II, made in 1948 :)The one in the picture is not functional but it definitely looks cool!
http://captjack.exaktaphile.com/Kine-Exakta%20II%2...
tipoo - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link
Thanks!