Apple announced a brand new chipset for the iPhone 5s – the Apple A7 – and in traditional Apple fashion proceeded to give very little detail about it. The company promised 2x performance increase over the iPhone 5 in CPU and GPU performance (and 40x over the original iPhone).

There was very little on the GPU front – OpenGL ES 3.0 support was added and the presenters boasted about the improved graphics, but GPU model remains unknown. The Apple A6 in the iPhone 5 had a PowerVR SGX543MP3, so there's a high chance Apple is using a newer PowerVR or at least one with more cores / at a higher clock rate.

A GFXBecnh 2.5 score confirms the performance has indeed gone up, but the test is getting old now (and uses OpenGL ES 2.0) so we're not seeing the full capabilities of the new GPU (like those fancy lens flares in Infinity Blade III).

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

Sony Xperia Z Ultra

60

Apple iPhone 5S

56

LG G2

54

Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)

43

HTC Butterfly S

42

Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)

41

HTC One

37

Google Nexus 4

32

Sony Xperia Z

31

Sony Xperia SP

31

Apple iPhone 5

30

Samsung Galaxy S4 mini

17

HTC One mini

15

HTC One X

11

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt on-screen

Higher is better

Apple iPhone 5S

53

LG G2

51

Apple iPad 4

41.5

Apple iPhone 5

41.1

Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)

41

LG G2

33.6

Apple iPad mini

24.3

Apple iPad 2

23.2

Apple iPad 3

21.3

In the 1080p off-screen test, the iPhone 5S shows nearly double the performance of its predecessor. This doesn’t show up in the on-screen test though as the benchmark hits the 60fps screen limit (the test is old and can't stress the GPU at the native 640 x 1136 resolution of the iPhone 5s).

With OpenGL ES 3.0 support on both iOS 7 and Android 4.3 and improving mobile GPUs, we're about to get a lot of eye candy on mobile 3D games.

Source | Via