During Apple’s iPad keynote yesterday, Phil Schiller, its senior vice president of worldwide marketing, claimed the tablet’s new A5X processor offers 4X the graphics performance of NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 chip.

NVIDIA says that while it was “certainly flattering” to be called out by the Cupertino company, it will be performing its own benchmarks on the new iPad to see if Apple’s claims are really accurate.

The Tegra 3 processor has been making its way into Android-powered tablets in recent months, providing devices like the Asus Transformer Prime will impressive processing power and stunning 3D graphics. But according to Apple, it can’t match the graphical performance of the new A5X chip.

NVIDIA (obviously) disagrees. Ken Brown, a spokesman for the company, told ZDNet:

It was “certainly flattering” to be called out by Apple, but the performance claims are sketchy without more data. “We don’t have the benchmark information,” said Brown. “We have to understand what the application was that was used. Was it one or a variety of applications? What drivers were used? There are so many issues to get into with benchmark.”

It’s unlikely Apple is going to provide its benchmarks. So NVIDIA says it will perform its own when Apple’s new tablet goes on sale on March 16.

“At some point it will become more clear what the performance really is,” said Brown. “For now, Apple has a really generic statement.”

You can be sure that NVIDIA’s benchmarks will provide different results, and that the company will fight for its own product. But do they really matter? I mean, will they really have any influence on your decision to purchase either the new iPad or a Tegra 3-powered tablet?