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[lukeskymac]

Is an iPhone even a gaming system? I know spec-wise it has pretty great bench numbers but in terms of actually running games, it's not optimized to run games on Wii U level.

"Optimized" is quickly becoming the most meaningless, over-generalizing word on GAF.

Uh, no.

Uh, yes?

The battery would also last about 45 minutes.

150. A bit more, actually.

The pics are real.

So real that the iPhone 7 image is purposefully poorly cropped from Apple's black site to make it look thicker than it is. Actual thickness is 7mm for the iPhone, and 10mm for the Nexus.

And don't even get me started on the implications that mentioning screen resolution, camera MP and fucking "seamless updates" on the image make. Since this thread was supposed to be mainly about GPU power anyway, let's have a look at some actual GPU numbers to put in perspective how utterly rubbish that pic is. I'll even throw the Nexus a bone and show offscreen numbers so its screen doesn't weigh it down even further:

Note how the Nexus' actual competitor, the iPhone 6, matches or exceeds it in all three graphs.

 

[Sir Abacus]

GPGPU was on its infancy, but it was quite a known fact that GPUs were far better than CPUs for graphics processing since like 2003. Developing such a powerful processor only to waste quite a lot of its power on something a more powerful GPU of the time could do WAY better was bad design no matter how much Sony tries to spin it. The Cell was overkill, cost Sony billions and got ditched.

You're assuming that Cell's only market was a CPU/GPU type combo. Cell BE was intended to be used in smart TVs where its SIMD implementation would have allowed for practically infinite decoding power (Toshiba showed off 48 1080p MPEG-2 streams at one point) and smarts for things like web browsing, voice recognition and what not. But instead ARM came with fixed function hardware at half the price and ate their breakfast on that one.

IBM was also running it in the HPC market for a little while where you basically throw any sort of single precision math at it and have it processed ridiculously quickly. The batch job nature of Cell SPEs made it basically IBM's mainframe wheelhouse as far as software went.

They probably picked Cell because it was infinitely flexible for a console. You need extra geometry? Extra shader power? Extra lighting? The SPEs have your back!

 

[Eusis]

And this is without considering the visual gap that will exist between any NX game and any iPhone 7 game. The latter doesn't even have anything that compares favorably against PS Vita launch titles like Wipeout and Uncharted. I don't even know what we're talking about.

Don't forget iPhone games are usually native resolution or close to it. If they were running at the same resolutions those Vita games were running at they'd probably curbstomp the Vita versions on raw technical prowess. Vita was essentially an early 2012 gaming oriented phone hardware-wise, and Apple's taken gaming seriously ENOUGH for something like that to walk all over the Vita by now.

It actually may have made the 3DS/Vita launch timing highly awkward. Their predecessors were getting long in the tooth and being run over by smartphones, yet they needed to come out during a time of rapid advances and when they wouldn't be able to overtake smartphone and tablet novelty. I could see it working out at least a LITTLE better now just by delivering 1080p displays with the power behind them to be truly appealing rather than too watered down compared to consoles and before long even smartphones. This might be a point the NX will soon prove or disprove actually.

 

[Alex]

For as much as I like chasing after new tech I feel like I'm going to be on this Oneplus One for at least another year. I've never felt less compelled to upgrade something.

 

[DR2K]

It'll also be the first device since their last major hardware release to come with a charger.

 

[Horsemama1956]

Don't really get the comparison. You could probably buy a PS4, XBONE and 3DS\Vita for the cost of this phone.

Apple wouldn't need anything near this powerful if they didn't run stupid resolutions on a tiny ass screen.

 

[ozfunghi]

For as much as I like chasing after new tech I feel like I'm going to be on this Oneplus One for at least another year. I've never felt less compelled to upgrade something.

I'm happy with my Xiaomi RMN2 but... at the rate i'm dropping it on concrete floors, i don't know how much more it can take. Already dropped it 4 times on a conrete floor.

 

[Chittagong]

something something coding straight to metal

 

[badb0y]

something something coding straight to metal

Ironically the iPhone already has a low level graphics API aptly named "Metal"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_(API)

 

[345triangle]

No, not at all. Just that Geekbench isn't a GPU benchmark. And the thread is about GPU. See the problem here ?

a CPU comparison would be even more lopsided.

 

[Astral Dog]

Uh, ok?
does it matter when the best looking and playing Nintendo games will be on the NX?

 

[Panajev2001a]

GPGPU was on its infancy, but it was quite a known fact that GPUs were far better than CPUs for graphics processing since like 2003. Developing such a powerful processor only to waste quite a lot of its power on something a more powerful GPU of the time could do WAY better was bad design no matter how much Sony tries to spin it. The Cell was overkill, cost Sony billions and got ditched.

Sir Abacus covered very well some more of the work CBEA was supposed to be used for and why all three companies in the STI partnership invested in the project. While it was the last time Sony could afford investing in manufacturing fabs for its consoles, which cost quite a lot, they reportedly invested less then $400 in the R&D of CELL and they were panning to reuse it quite a lot considering how it could scale and how flexible it was while also how good it was at number crunching (SPE's were quite completely autonomous units, after an initial kickstart, with their DMA able to work with virtual addresses and very powerful integer and FP vector processing).

Blu-Ray inclusion and the high cost of some of the materials needed for it, the scarce Blu-violet laser diodes amongst them, ballooned the price. Launch PS3's packed in a LOT of HW for that $599. A 60 GB swappable HDD, PS1 and PS2 BC (thanks to the initial inclusion of both EE+GS and the Direct RDRAM needed for it... which complicated the motherboard design further), Blu-Ray + DVD + CD + Super Audio CD/SACD playback, Compact Flash + SD + Memory Stick reader, 4 USB ports, Ethernet and WiFi built in (Xbox 360 charged for the latter), etc...

Still, Sony was thinking about a GPU far earlier than you would think, the pure software rasterisation dream probably did not make it out of the initial labs theorisations and patented to cover future ground. CPU makers have yet to give that dream up... see Intel a few years later with Larrabee for example. It may have not been with nVidia.

 

[crazy monkey]

Nintendo should design 800$ phone for gaming.

 

[wonderful103]

If it was putting the games out at Wii U resolutions? Yea.

750p?

 

[LordOcidax]

Can the i7 run XCX??

 

[visiblemode]

Very interesting point OP.

 

[cyberheater]

Nintendo should design 800$ phone for gaming.

No thanks. I would like a phone that's significantly faster then 7 year old hardware.

 

[jdstorm]

Can the i7 run XCX??

Who knows... It's stronger then the WiiU so probably.

Spoiler

for a few minutes until the battery crapped out and you'd be stuck with terrible sound since you can't charge it and use headphones

 

[Doctre81]

That may be true but Mario Run still has worse graphics and NSBU despite obviously being the same engine.

Phone /= console\

Edit:

Or maybe not. Just saw this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E39ychZKnDI
May be missing some lighting effects maybe but it looks on par.

 

[ethomaz]

So real that the iPhone 7 image is purposefully poorly cropped from Apple's black site to make it look thicker than it is. Actual thickness is 7mm for the iPhone, and 10mm for the Nexus.

And don't even get me started on the implications that mentioning screen resolution, camera MP and fucking "seamless updates" on the image make. Since this thread was supposed to be mainly about GPU power anyway, let's have a look at some actual GPU numbers to put in perspective how utterly rubbish that pic is. I'll even throw the Nexus a bone and show offscreen numbers so its screen doesn't weigh it down even further:

Note how the Nexus' actual competitor, the iPhone 6, matches or exceeds it in all three graphs.

Edit - Sorry... I read your post in the complete opposite (and wrong) way.

Face palm to me

 

[osiris3355]

"Optimized" is quickly becoming the most meaningless, over-generalizing word on GAF.



Uh, yes?



150. A bit more, actually.



So real that the iPhone 7 image is purposefully poorly cropped from Apple's black site to make it look thicker than it is. Actual thickness is 7mm for the iPhone, and 10mm for the Nexus.

And don't even get me started on the implications that mentioning screen resolution, camera MP and fucking "seamless updates" on the image make. Since this thread was supposed to be mainly about GPU power anyway, let's have a look at some actual GPU numbers to put in perspective how utterly rubbish that pic is. I'll even throw the Nexus a bone and show offscreen numbers so its screen doesn't weigh it down even further:

Note how the Nexus' actual competitor, the iPhone 6, matches or exceeds it in all three graphs.

You do realize that the Nexus devices use the Qualcomm SOC architecture that is 7 - 8 months old, right?

Every fall the iPhone gets released with a brand spankin new SOC while the nexus its compared against has the same SOC architecture that was released back in March. Google doesn't make processors yet so their phone releases are not timed with new SOC architectures.

You could do the flip side and with graphing that's actually on Qualcomm's release schedule (galaxy s7)

 

[LordOfChaos]

But the iPhone 7 CPU runs at 300Mhz? Las time I checked that puts it about on par with the PSP in terms of clock speed?

Yeah there is WAY more to power than CPU clock speed, but the Wii U clock is 1.2GHz right? Which would make its CPU 4x more powerful, even if it has less RAM, a poorer GPU,etc.

Erh, what? The very first iPhone a decade ago didn't even have a max clock that low, it was 412MHz. The iPhone 7 is something a touch over 2GHz for the two large cores.

Are you looking at the theoretical GPU clock maybe? even that wasn't an actual figure, just to estimate the Gflops conservatively.

But the title doesn't really mean anything so long as Wii games look better than most mobile games.

I mean in the most literal grammatical sense, it still checks out

 

[BigEmil]

Mobile is my favourite handheld all-in-one device. Has everything a smartphone can do plus gaming and emulators etc in my phone I carry everywhere which is essential.
I don't need another heavy separate 720p screen NX to carry with me also just for some games, Nintendo should just go 3rd party simple as.

 

[Not]

Lol Nintendo

Mobile is my favourite handheld all-in-one device. Has everything a smartphone can do plus gaming and emulators etc in my phone I carry everywhere which is essential.
I don't need another heavy separate 720p screen NX to carry with me also just for some games, Nintendo should just go 3rd party simple as.

They wouldn't sell as many games.

 

[Doctre81]

Mobile is my favourite handheld all-in-one device. Has everything a smartphone can do plus gaming and emulators etc in my phone I carry everywhere which is essential.
I don't need another heavy separate 720p screen NX to carry with me also just for some games, Nintendo should just go 3rd party simple as.

Nintendo going 3rd party does not mean putting all their games on iphone.

 

[nkarafo]

I don't need another heavy separate 720p screen NX to carry with me also just for some games, Nintendo should just go 3rd party simple as.

Not gonna happen and it shouldn't. Mobile games are limited compared to console games, the touch screen isn't suitable for too many genres and the games have very low production values. You aren't going to see games like Mario Galaxy/3D world, Zelda NX, Metroid Prime, etc on a smartphone. Ever.

 

[osiris3355]

Mobile is my favourite handheld all-in-one device. Has everything a smartphone can do plus gaming and emulators etc in my phone I carry everywhere which is essential.
I don't need another heavy separate 720p screen NX to carry with me also just for some games, Nintendo should just go 3rd party simple as.

Nintendo doesn't want their console to lose the headphone jack.

 

[TheGreyHulk]

Nintendo should design 800$ phone for gaming.

Only if friend codes replace our phone numbers

 

[jdstorm]

Not gonna happen and it shouldn't. Mobile games are limited compared to console games, the touch screen isn't suitable for too many genres and the games have very low production values. You aren't going to see games like Mario Galaxy/3D world, Zelda NX, Metroid Prime, etc on a smartphone. Ever.

They are already there. Just hook up a Mifi controller, or a regular controller via Bluetooth. It's pretty simple

 

[aggienader]

And yet this is such an irrelevant thing when you put it into perspective.

Thanks for reminding how shitty iPhone/android gaming is OP.

 

[Marmelade]

Let me ask you this: are you sure Sony did not go somewhere else before going to nVidia for a GPU?

I might be totally wrong, and definitely off topic, but wasn't the gpu supposed to be designed by Toshiba?

 

[nkarafo]

They are already there. Just hook up a Mifi controller, or a regular controller via Bluetooth. It's pretty simple

Even if developers treat these accessories as the base for games (not likely to happen since games will still need to be dumbed down for touch controls for everyone to be able to play) you are still stuck with low budget productions and the games will still need to have limited size to fit whatever standard the smartphone applications have.

 

[wonderful103]

No thanks. I would like a phone that's significantly faster then 7 year old hardware.

wouldn't it be funny if phone companies charged you a yearly fee of $60 to use your own wifi

I'm sure you'd be ok with it

 

[Kodaman]

you should write a book op

 

[R00bot]

For as much as I like chasing after new tech I feel like I'm going to be on this Oneplus One for at least another year. I've never felt less compelled to upgrade something.

I recently bought a Oneplus 3, and it's the best phone I've ever had. Don't think I'll be upgrading it any time soon

 

[Synth]

750p?

Admittedly I'd forgot iPhones were still hanging out at those resolutions.

Answer would still be yes though as a result.

 

[wonderful103]

Admittedly I'd forgot iPhones were still hanging out at those resolutions.

Answer would still be yes though as a result.

There are 1080p Wii u games.

 

[Synth]

There are 1080p Wii u games.

Yea, I'm aware of that. Resolution is just an aspect of the graphics tho. The iPhone's screen being lower res doesn't mean its chip would be incapable of outputting a higher res better than the Wii U would.

 

[blu]

You're assuming that Cell's only market was a CPU/GPU type combo. Cell BE was intended to be used in smart TVs where its SIMD implementation would have allowed for practically infinite decoding power (Toshiba showed off 48 1080p MPEG-2 streams at one point) and smarts for things like web browsing, voice recognition and what not. But instead ARM came with fixed function hardware at half the price and ate their breakfast on that one.

IBM was also running it in the HPC market for a little while where you basically throw any sort of single precision math at it and have it processed ridiculously quickly. The batch job nature of Cell SPEs made it basically IBM's mainframe wheelhouse as far as software went.

They probably picked Cell because it was infinitely flexible for a console. You need extra geometry? Extra shader power? Extra lighting? The SPEs have your back!

Actually IBM had CELL with doubles specifically for HPC.

Erh, what? The very first iPhone a decade ago didn't even have a max clock that low, it was 412MHz. The iPhone 7 is something a touch over 2GHz for the two large cores.

Are you looking at the theoretical GPU clock maybe? even that wasn't an actual figure, just to estimate the Gflops conservatively.

That's the confusion that stems from the fact the first A10 Geekbench leaks reported the clocks of the LITTLE cores ; )

 

[spekkeh]

How many shaders does the new PowerVR have? I can't find it.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Actually IBM had CELL with doubles specifically for HPC.

an extension of the same work and not a new arch .

 

[Panajev2001a]

I might be totally wrong, and definitely off topic, but wasn't the gpu supposed to be designed by Toshiba?

Well... .

 

[Peltz]

Game companies make more money on Iphone than on Wii U. Is the Wii U even a gaming system?

Depressingly hilarious.

 

[Toadthemushroom]

The larger numbers = better game is annoying, you can see it with the complaints that the NX's screen will "only" be 720p, which is apparently terrible. Despite having a dot pitch that'll make the pixels indistinguishable to the eye at a reasonable viewing distance. Its ppi is slightly higher than the Vita, and its screen is larger and higher resolution, so that extra resolution will either be used to make things bigger, or show even more than developers could on the Vita.

It's the same story with phones. 1440p sounds nice in theory, but 1) The phone ends up rendering more pixels that are indistinguishable to the eye, and 2) OLED screens utilise a PenTile subpixel structure, which gives an effective resolution of around 2/3-3/4 of the actual pixel count because every third subpixel is shared between neighbouring pixels (this leads to a "brick"-like arrangement when using devices like the HTC Vive and Rift which is absent on PS VR, despite PS VR having a lower resolution panel.

But yeah, the metric seems to be how big the number is instead of how it works in practise. Sure, the iPhone 7 might "only" be 750p, but 1) the pixel count is fine for the majority of viewing instances 2) the device renders a sensible resolution for performance and battery life and 3) It's the first display shipping on a phone to accurately support both the sRGB and wider DCI-P3 colour gamuts, and it automatically switches between them depending on the content being shown to ensure sRGB content isn't oversaturated. But of course that's not something worth applauding or buying the device for because it's not a bigger number like 1440p.

You do realize that the Nexus devices use the Qualcomm SOC architecture that is 7 - 8 months old, right?

Every fall the iPhone gets released with a brand spankin new SOC while the nexus its compared against has the same SOC architecture that was released back in March. Google doesn't make processors yet so their phone releases are not timed with new SOC architectures.

You could do the flip side and with graphing that's actually on Qualcomm's release schedule (galaxy s7)

Let's talk real world performance though: the year-old iPhone 6s and the brand-new Galaxy Note 7.

The Snapdragon 820 in the Note 7 is newer than the A9 in the iPhone 6s, yet the Note 7 delivers embarrassing performance by comparison, particularly in genuinely resource-heavy apps like Lapse It and PhotoShop Mix.

Also note how the Galaxy Note 7 fails to keep all the apps in memory in the second lap, despite it having twice the RAM. The iPhone 6s with its 2GB RAM has no problems.

 

[Painguy]

So are we talking about Nintendo here or iphone vs android?

 

[Blackpuppy]

You do realize that the Nexus devices use the Qualcomm SOC architecture that is 7 - 8 months old, right?

Every fall the iPhone gets released with a brand spankin new SOC while the nexus its compared against has the same SOC architecture that was released back in March. Google doesn't make processors yet so their phone releases are not timed with new SOC architectures.

You could do the flip side and with graphing that's actually on Qualcomm's release schedule (galaxy s7)

Was that just before the S7 caught on fire?

 

[MuchoMalo]

Unlikely since benchmarks already show A10 beating out the Nvidia X1.

Is it Geekbench? If so, that's always favored iOS ridiculously. There's no chance in hell that the A10 is beating a full-speed X1 though, and NX could well end up being even faster than that with a Pascal-based Tegra under the hood.

Was that just before the S7 caught on fire?

You're thinking of the Note 7.

 

[Blackpuppy]

Is it Geekbench? If so, that's always favored iOS ridiculously. There's no chance in hell that the A10 is beating a full-speed X1 though, and NX could well end up being even faster than that with a Pascal-based Tegra under the hood.



You're thinking of the Note 7.

Argh! Of course. Sorry, their naming conventions are a bit confusing.

But the A10 might have better CPU performce - MAYBE - but I'm pretty sure the Tegra smokes the iPhone's GPU.

 

[big_z]

That may be true but Mario Run still has worse graphics and NSBU despite obviously being the same engine.

Phone /= console\

Edit:

Or maybe not. Just saw this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E39ychZKnDI
May be missing some lighting effects maybe but it looks on par.

not even close to being on par. backgrounds are 2D for Mario run, NSMBU had 3d backgrounds and other effects going on. obviously using the same assets but its stripped back a fair bit for the phone.

 

[blu]

an extension of the same work and not a new arch .

Not even a new uarch, let alone a new arch ; )