tequila bomb

iPad GPU : Fill rate a little disappointing.

We already have the pretty impressive CPU benchmarks in for the iPad :

About 2 times the speed of current iDevices.

And we know that the iPad has the same memory as the current generation of iPods and iPhones :

256MB.

It appears from my testing that the GPU is basically the same as that found in the current iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3G. But as I mentioned here, our screen real estate is 5 times bigger on the iPad than on the current iPhone and iPod Touch. This means the iPad GPU has to push 5 times more pixels each frame than current iPods and iPhones.

I am speaking to more and more devs. about the GPU on the iPad who are finding the same as me:

The raw fill rate on the iPad is back at where we were in iPhone 3G days.

Which is a little disappointing for game devs. But not the end of the world, as we have higher image fidelity thanks to shaders in OpenGL ES2.0.

Even so, we now have more disparity between all the iDevices to worry about when producing high performance 3D software.

The iPod app is very different than that on the iPhone, and we’re not entirely sure how we feel about it. There’s no Cover Flow view, which is suspicious considering the large and beautiful screen.

From ars technica.

As many people have noticed, the iPad does not have coverflow in the iPod app… I think this has something to do with screen real estate and fill rate also.