Apple's A8 SoC likely carrying new 6-core PowerVR GPU, clocked at 1.4GHz with 1GB RAM

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  • Reply 261 of 269
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post





    In somewhat of a surprise the latest Moto X beats out the iPhone 6 is some tests too even tho the processor is not the latest. image

    Well it has a Qualcomm 801 Gaturguy, that 's an extremely fast CPU, the A8 beats it in Single-Core but Mulit-Core goes to Qualcomm and Nvidia. The A8 is no slouch though, by any means. Nvidias new 64bit ARM processors though will pretty much wipe the floor with everything out there when it is released in the next two months, I can't wait to get my hands on a development board with one on it. I have one for the 32bit K1, I'm running Ubuntu and Arch on it and it's fast. I wish I could get a development board with an A8 on it, Apple please license you chips to others. I also can't wait to see how Qualcomms new 810 will perform, yeah next year is going to be a great year for ARM CPU's

     

    Those interested in grabbing a development board with the K1 32bit you can do so directly from Nvidia or Amazon. There pretty fast with shipping times, I got mine just 4 days after I ordered it. It's worth the 200 too as you can make a pretty cool multimedia/gaming/Internet/render machine, it's actually fast enough to do real work on it, programming and such. That GPU is friggen awesome too, runs emulators like butter, even Playstation 2 and N64 at 1080p. Yeah, playing GoldenEye at 1080p is a whole new experience. Interestingly, when I run SunSpider on the Arch Linux partition I gained over 280 points over Android.

     

     

     

    Don't forget to grab a case from Puget Systems

     

     

    ...or keep it opened so you can cluster a bunch of them together for one hell of a rendering monster, with 192 CUDA cores per board at 300 GFLOPS! you can't go wrong with this investment. The board also comes with all of the clustering and rendering software needed, I haven't had much time to play with mine but I did manage to use it with Photoshop, awesome addition for those who use a notebook without a dedicated graphics card.

     

  • Reply 262 of 269
    Originally Posted by Majel View Post

    I do believe Apple knows what they're doing as far as their marketing schemes, adding a little of this and that as each model comes to pass. What I haven't understood so far is Apple's loyal consumers. I guess if you've had the first Iphone up until now I can understand that, but I'd sure like someone to create a clear picture.

     

    I was worried when I read the first sentence of your second paragraph, but it seems that you came out okay.

     

    What you seem to be misunderstanding here is the scope of both Apple and Android phone updates. It looks like you’re implying that Apple’s iPhone updates have less magnitude than any given Android product line, which isn’t true. If you look at the change in specs between two iPhones and compare that to, say, two Galaxy, LG, or Motorola phones, you’ll see roughly the same change in numbers, for all the little that is worth. Because when you then look at the actual device performance, you’ll see that it truly doesn’t matter. You can jam 3 gigs of RAM into a phone, but if the OS is too stupid or pathetic to take advantage of it, all it does is drain your battery.

     

    Conversely, Apple has a 64-bit CPU already, but retains 1 gig of RAM. To someone with only a cursory knowledge of processors, this would appear “stupid”, as to them, “64-bit is only ‘useful’ when you have more than 3.3 gigs of RAM addressable.” We of course know otherwise, but in a comparison of only written numbers (a spec sheet) instead of in FLOPS, millisecond responses, or seconds to open, the iPhone’ll blow anything else away.

     

    I’m glad that you yourself have already mentioned why this is: integration. Apple not only designs the hardware to go with their software, they design the very chips themselves to be put together. That’s how a 1.4 GHz processor with 1 gig of RAM can outperform a 2GHz CrapSnapdragon with 3 gigs of RAM.

     

    Are less specs, but excellent integration a bad thing? Thanks for reading! 


     

    Finally, please note that the iPhone is the fastest phone on the planet. Every iPhone, at launch, has always been the fastest phone on the planet. There’s nothing ‘less’ about an iPhone’s tech specs, other than ‘less one-eyed trouser snake waving’.

     

    Very glad to see that we apparently have a new convert, though. Welcome.

     

    Originally Posted by Relic View Post

    ...the amount of people who said that not only was 16:9 useless for a phone...

     

    I only ever remember that complaint applied to a tablet. Did you ever get a chance to use some of those early tablets with that resolution? They felt embarrassing to even hold in portrait... 

     

    I imagine it may have been applied to a phone once or twice, as I can see someone saying, “It’s a phone, not an HDTV; why would I need a TV’s ratio when one of the last things I’ll be doing on it directly is watching video?” but I don’t recall it being a big point.

  • Reply 263 of 269
    majel wrote: »
    I am an Android user. Always have been. Never had the Iphone early on because of the contract that At&t had with Apple. I see that there are huge debates with Android and Apple users. Personally, I don't think I know enough to give an educated opinion, for the simple fact that I have never owned an Iphone, except for an Ipod Touch. Technically, I love tech! I read up on everything and I spend hours going through it all. I get just as excited about new items to market just like everyone else.

    I would like to share an unbiased opinion concerning both Android and Apple products. From what I gather, Samsung makes an absolute beast of a phone. Pardon me, but an absolute beast with lag. There is so much bloatware on these phones that they technically need all the memory they can stuff into a handheld. Their phones tend to recognize little to no response at times. They are very quick but the lag thing always has been frustrating for me. Another frustrating aspect of a Galaxy super-phone is the fact that they are made of plastic. I can speak from experience that I have dropped my Gs4 from waist height in a completely enclosed Otterbox case and the digitizer broke, hence the phone was no good. Needless to say, I refuse to purchase an Otterbox ever again, and the mishap has led me to venture out and find a new sidekick. Especially when my friend's Iphone screen is completely busted with the bottom half missing, and the phone still works! (Please note that I am on my 3rd Galaxy S4 in six months!)

    The Iphone on the other hand, I am told, is very integrated and doesn't experience lag. Also, I've never purchased after the At&t contract because of the small screen. I do have a vision disability and prefer a larger screen size. Now that my dream has come to pass, I am considering what I never thought I'd consider, which is the purchase of the 6-plus, over the Note 4 (even though I'm still buying one for my wife). I am really interested to see if this 1 gig Iphone can at least match with Samsung's 3 gig beast.

    I do believe Apple knows what they're doing as far as their marketing schemes, adding a little of this and that as each model comes to pass. What I haven't understood so far is Apple's loyal consumers. I guess if you've had the first Iphone up until now I can understand that, but I'd sure like someone to create a clear picture. I'm sure that there are other Androiders out there that may move to this Iphone frenzy since the big screen has been released.

    For me, I just need a well-integrated device with elegance and a quality feel. I need it to perform unparalleled with all my daily tasks. Are less specs, but excellent integration a bad thing? Thanks for reading!

    I started out with a HTC phone because my area is best covered by Verizon and the iPhone wasn't in Verizon's bag when my dumb phone died. The HTC was a nice enough phone and I thought of it as a "trainer" phone... I wanted to get some understanding of the Android experience before owning an iPhone when Verizon finally could handle the Apple iPhones. I spent two full years with the HTC and never could figure out how to get my photos off the device.

    I've now had two full years with the iPhone 5 and have enjoyed owning and using it more then I did the HTC. Everything worked a little bit better then the HTC, but a little bit here and a little bit there, and pretty soon it adds up to a more enjoyable experience. I never could hold the HTC still enough indoors to take a sharp photo. I never had that problem with my iPhone. For other uses, the iPhone has been easier to figure out then the HTC ever was... I even tried to read the 70+ page HTC manual and had trouble still.

    I filled my 16 Gb iPhone to the brim with apps, books and music, dumped out a bunch of music and apps and filled it up again. A year ago I added an iPad to my Apple collection of great devices. Next month I'll get an iPhone 6 or 6+, after I have a chance to fondle them. This time I will get the 64Gb iPhone. Experience has shown me I can't easily live within the confines of 16 Gb... same with the iPad when the time comes upgrade that device... The mass storage is hard to see how much one may need, and it's easier to under-buy until a person experiences how they will use the iDevice. None of the other iDevice specs seem to be a limiting factor like mass storage to me using my two-year-old devices. Some one else may find they are using the iDevices differently and experiencing different limitations.
  • Reply 264 of 269
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

    I only ever remember that complaint applied to a tablet. Did you ever get a chance to use some of those early tablets with that resolution? They felt embarrassing to even hold in portrait... 

     

    I imagine it may have been applied to a phone once or twice, as I can see someone saying, “It’s a phone, not an HDTV; why would I need a TV’s ratio when one of the last things I’ll be doing on it directly is watching video?” but I don’t recall it being a big point.


     

    I like the aspect ratio of the iPad, great for reading but I also like the 16:9 on my Nexus 10 for movies. I think right now though my favorite aspect ratio is the old iPhone resolution, 3:2 now used for the Surface 3, perfect for reading and watching movies.

  • Reply 265 of 269
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    relic wrote: »
    I'm sure it was a consideration, everything is when you are designing a new gadget, that's just logical, the real question is though and I have yet to see any real answer yet, except for guessing, does 2GB of RAM draw too much power from the battery and I honestly don't think so. Memory power consumption has never been an issue before nor was it even given as an excuse when Apple didn't use 2GB in the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, iPad Air or iPad Air Mini. I would have rather Apple stayed with the A7 and upped the RAM to 2GB if it was, the A7 is still more than capable. But I don't think it's an issue and will continue being thick headed about it until I see any real proof to contrary. I think it was about pricing, maybe even supply constraints, again, I just hope the new iPad Air will have 2GB.

    It isn't whether 2GB draws too much power from the battery in and of itself. If Apple has certain specs for battery usage, and they looked at the design, and thought that something must go to meet those soecs, then it could be that the extra RAM was the easiest way to do it, and so the extra GB went away.

    I don't believe that the issue is whether 2GB draws too much, but rather that overall, they wanted the draw to be below a certain number, and what was the easiest way to get there without causing too much of a problem for everything else.
  • Reply 266 of 269
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    I'm not arguing about a Gb being a Gb. I'm saying a Gb with a 32-bit path has the half the transistors, flip flops, or mojo as a Gb chip with a 64-bit path. if you have a RAM chip with a certain memory capacity, then that capacity is based on the chip being used at a certain word size.
    You cannot take a one-Gb chip and decide to have twice the word length without halving the word count. THAT'S my point.

    For Apple to increase their word length to 64-bit, they needed to DO SOMETHING to the supplied memory if they also did not decrease the RAM size stated in NUMBER of memory words. Capisce??

    I no longer understand what you're talking about. At least, I thought I understood before.

    You're using Gb, instead of GB. You're talking about a gigabit of RAM instead of a gigabyte of RAM. Do you realize that? We don't measure RAM in computers, or even in memory sticks, in bits. We measure them in bytes. A gigabyte of RAM remains a gigabyte of RAM no matter how wide the memory bus is.

    RAM manufacturers spec their chips as being bit wide. So a one Gigabit chip can be used as a one bit chip, or arranged as a one byte chip. So it would either be one Gigabit, or 128 megabytes. So as an example, Apple could use eight one gigabit chips to make one one gigabyte memory. Then they would need 64 one bit chips to make a 64 bit memory path. But they didn't do that because it would be 8 gigabytes of RAM, and there are chips that are big enough so that isn't required. What they probably did was to buy an 8 gigabit chip, and arrange it as a 64 bit memory path. That chip, of course, is the same as one gigabyte of RAM.
  • Reply 267 of 269
    melgross wrote: »
    ....I don't believe that the issue is whether 2GB draws too much, but rather that overall, they wanted the draw to be below a certain number, and what was the easiest way to get there without causing too much of a problem for everything else.

    Well, I think they want to keep something back for fall 2015.

    Likely then we get to have 2 browser tabs staying 'live'.
  • Reply 268 of 269
    Originally Posted by aBeliefSystem View Post

    Likely then we get to have 2 browser tabs staying 'live'.



    My first gen can keep five tabs live. People need to drop this nonsense.

  • Reply 269 of 269
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member

    My first gen can keep five tabs live. People need to drop this nonsense.

    It really depends on the sites your on Tallest, I personally found forums to be the biggest culprit when it comes to resetting after navigating away from safari for a minute to check say your email or answer a text. It does happen more times then it should, at least with me anyway and I'm sure it's something the an extra gig could probably solve.
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