KITA

tmay said:

KITA said:

AppleInsider said:

Moving on to graphics testing, the publication ran the demanding 3DMark Slingshot Extreme 3.1 test to find the Note 9 best its S9+ forebear with a score of 4,639. Apple and OnePlus both beat Samsung with scores of 4,994 and 5,124, respectively. It appears 3DMark has optimized its test suite since Tom's last ran the evaluation, as the S9+ previously hit a tally of 5,793, while the iPhone X notched 3,998.

Sustained performance is the elephant in the room. We should wait until the Note 9 is properly tested before jumping to any conclusions. Clearly the iPhone can't even sustain anything close to that score.

This is the Graphics score of the test ,not the combined score (Physics is excluded):


The OnePlus 6 has, by far, the best Snapdragon 845 implementation with very little throttling (some of the gaming phones with high binned / overclocked SoCs might be even better, but they have yet to be tested). It's also important to note that this test is OpenGL on Android and Metal on iOS. Newer games, such as Fortnite, use Vulkan.

I don't think the A12 will overtake that level of GPU performance, Qualcomm has a clear lead, and the 7nm Snapdragon 855 is only 5~6 months away (entered mass production a month or so back).

Funny how you always seem to see an"elephant in the room" named "Sustained Performance", as if that is the only metric of value for any phone. 

Enjoy your day, 

It's not the only metric, but sustained graphics performance is critical for gaming, AR or other 3D applications that are open for more than ~30 seconds.

A lot of the important metrics of a phone are rarely discussed. It's mostly just peak performance of an isolated Geekbench CPU test.

AppleInsider said:

Moving on to graphics testing, the publication ran the demanding 3DMark Slingshot Extreme 3.1 test to find the Note 9 best its S9+ forebear with a score of 4,639. Apple and OnePlus both beat Samsung with scores of 4,994 and 5,124, respectively. It appears 3DMark has optimized its test suite since Tom's last ran the evaluation, as the S9+ previously hit a tally of 5,793, while the iPhone X notched 3,998.

Sustained performance is the elephant in the room. We should wait until the Note 9 is properly tested before jumping to any conclusions. Clearly the iPhone can't even sustain anything close to that score.

This is the Graphics score of the test ,not the combined score (Physics is excluded):


The OnePlus 6 has, by far, the best Snapdragon 845 implementation with very little throttling (some of the gaming phones with high binned / overclocked SoCs might be even better, but they have yet to be tested). It's also important to note that this test is OpenGL on Android and Metal on iOS. Newer games, such as Fortnite, use Vulkan.

I don't think the A12 will overtake that level of GPU performance, Qualcomm has a clear lead, and the 7nm Snapdragon 855 is only 5~6 months away (entered mass production a month or so back).

Mike Wuerthele said:

KITA said:

AppleInsider said:

For these tests, we were rocking a six-core Intel CPU inside our 15-inch MacBook Pro. It a Core i7 processor with a base speed of 2.2GHz with boost speeds up to powerful 4.1GHz.

Geekbench 4 returned 4,884 for single core and 22,179 for the multi-core. Even though we have the base model 15-inch, it still outpaces the top of the line 2017 model which earned 4,360 and 11,979 for single and multi-core scores respectively.

That also is way above the scores we clocked earlier on the base 13-inch pro which earned 4,602 and 16,699 for the single and multi-core tests.

Geekbench is not telling the full story here at all:

You snipped out the rest of the quote in your zeal.

"In the real world, thermal constraints may be limiting the maximum power that the MacBook Pro could have. We've already started looking into this, and how to solve the problem absent of any patch from Apple, and will get back to you about it."

No, my focus was intentional.

I'm simply disappointed at the amount of attention Geekbench is getting when its results are proving to have very little to tell about the device.

AppleInsider said:

For these tests, we were rocking a six-core Intel CPU inside our 15-inch MacBook Pro. It a Core i7 processor with a base speed of 2.2GHz with boost speeds up to powerful 4.1GHz.

Geekbench 4 returned 4,884 for single core and 22,179 for the multi-core. Even though we have the base model 15-inch, it still outpaces the top of the line 2017 model which earned 4,360 and 11,979 for single and multi-core scores respectively.

That also is way above the scores we clocked earlier on the base 13-inch pro which earned 4,602 and 16,699 for the single and multi-core tests.

Geekbench is not telling the full story here at all:

AppleInsider said:

The benchmarks have come under fire from critics, with them saying that there are "breaks" to smooth out the performance. However, that does not appear to be the case.

While there are pauses in the test, they are done at the end of each test, not in the middle. So, individual tests are performed under full load, with no cool-down period during the test to keep processor speeds low.

Geekbench 4 uses 2 second pauses are after each workload. Each workload only lasts for, in most cases, ~1 second and there are 50 workloads in total (25 for single core / 25 for multi core).

Here's an example in Geekbench 4 multicore:

MacBook Pro 15 (i9-8950HK) - 22,522
Gigabyte Aero 15X (i7-8750H) -  19,073

And here's the sustained performance in Cinebench R15 CPU for the Aero 15X:


That's an average of ~1,100 for the Aero 15X.

Meanwhile, the MacBook Pro, as per your testing, both the i7 and i9 only scored ~900 sustained.

Clearly the Geekbench 4 results are completely misleading as even the best case scenario for the i9 MacBook Pro fell short of the i7 Aero 15X's worst run.

Apple is hardly the only vendor dealing with i9 thermal conditions, and like we said, Premiere performs far better with Nvidia GPU silicon than AMD Radeon gear which explains most of the Dell ripping through the test. 

Dave Lee used the same Gigabyte Aero 15X (i7 + GTX 1070 MaxQ) discussed above, not the Dell XPS 15 (i9 + GTX 1050Ti MaxQ). Although, I imagine the Dell might have also faired quite well.

The most obvious solution right now is for Apple alter the peak speed of the processor by adjusting the power that the chip gets. Ironically, slowing the peak speed of the processor may allow it to finish tasks quicker, as it will slow down less to keep the CPU cool.

On that topic, someone has undervolted a Core i9 Dell XPS 15 with some excellent results. Clearly the Core i9 is not an easy CPU for 4~4.5 lbs laptops to handle, but it might be possible to get some more performance out of it after all.

Great work on the article! Lots of key points covered. Looking forward to more!