Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) When you bought games released in 2011 on Steam, did that require you to own a PC that was manufactured in 2011? The gaming model on smartphones/tablets works more like the PC market than the console market. Hardware is refreshed each year, but most developers aren't going to design software that only works with the bleeding edge. Plus, because the hardware tends to be more closed, it's easier for developers to maximize the performance, so owners of older hardware will benefit there as well.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) Prices may be similar but value is not. If you bought a PS3 at release the cost can be broke down to about $9 a month for the latest gaming console. By comparison an iPad would cost about $50 a month to stay with the latest generation tablet. Obviously many wont and don't care but I think the cost of ownership will be too high for the younger jobless generation.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) Value is still relative though. If you bought a PS3 at launch, you would also be buying software at $60 a pop. If you want accessories, something like a controller will cost about as much as a game ($55). The ipad cost includes almost everything into one unit. Cameras, display, etc. The software stays optimized for the most used unit at the time much like how pc games work so staying with the latest generation every single year is about as futile as buying every single new video card coming out. Although, mentioning value again, there are plenty of people that sell their last gen ipad to purchase their new ipad as it holds its value very well.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) I've never stated otherwise, OSX and Windows are not ideal but they are flexible (much more so Windows). I simply cannot echo your sentiments of a Core Duo machine being slower than an iPad for anything as I do not find my sub-Core Solo/9700m machine to be bested by an iPad in anything. Sure, the iPad does it prettier in a way, but the laptop is better for productivity. I have to conclude that your system is just cluttered, as are most OSX systems after more than a year on the same install with regular use. Yes, an optimised system will be better, but as we can see the hardware itself is in the order of 4-10x slower than 6-7 year old laptop tech. They get the best out of the system and make up for much of that, so for general use it is comparable for general tasks at times because the OS is designed to be limiting. Your original claim though, ... suggests that the hardware is clearly better! Because dual = dual and quad > single! This is purposely vague and misleading as in each case the hardware is considerably slower. If you want to spout system and software efficiency do so, it is pretty impressive what they get out of such limited hardware, but you can't have your cake and eat it too - the problem comes when you take these claims at face value and then in turn conclude that iPad hardware is more capable than laptops and how it will soon surpass Xbox 360 for gaming performance. The original article from this thread stated that Apple claimed 4x, and it was quoted here multiple times and accepted as actual statement without correction thus far. I can't even find anything on google when searching for Apple claiming a5x is 2 times faster than tegra 3, it only brings up articles that mention the 4 times figure. So yeah, nothing misleading going on here... every source on the net just heard 4 and that is the figure being discussed everywhere with no correction. Bit odd. First up, citadel ran fairly poorly on the iPad and fine on the iPhone 4. This was because of the greater fillrate the higher res screen demanded. It runs just fine on the iPad 2 hitting the 35fps cap, but on iPad 3 with 4x the fillrate demand I can't see it running as well as the iPad 2, in fullscreen res anyhow. It's all outlined here, no need to mix and match between benchmarks and marketing claims: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-ipad-2 Now on to your ongoing attempts to mate marketing claims with unrelated benchmarks. What you're saying essentially is that the iPad 2 is 2 & 1/3rd to 2 & 2/3rd's Xbox 360's capability, yet theoretical throughput is 1/10th that of the Xbox 360. So one customised system with a purpose built and optimised chipset and OS is 23-26x more efficient as another customised and completely closed hardware system (unlike the multiple iOS devices software must support) with a purpose built and optimised chipset and OS. That's some fine optimising there, Apple must've sacrificed a lot of virgins to the Gods! Why haven't Epic released GoW3 on iPad2 yet? With over 2 times the tapped potential of the 360 they could add 8xSSAA and double the poly count! What a bunch of morons they are, they mustn't like money. They'll probably get their act together with iPad 3 and release the next gen games on it before the new consoles are even out!
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) The PS3 comes with a controller, a blu-ray drive, HDMI out, Dolby and DTS audio, streaming and social apps, and an online library of games that are similar to Apple games for a similar price. What it doesn't come with is a 10" screen.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) It doesn't come with a screen. And on top of that, a screen with a higher than HD resolution muahhahaha.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) No, but you'd probably have to either spend more money on your current PC to make it better or make do with sub standard graphics and performance. I like owning a console and knowing that until the next one comes out in a few years time I can play my games knowing that I'm playing them in the best quality (as far as consoles are concerned) and won't have to spend more money next year just to stay with the best quality. The bottom line is iPads come out far too frequently for me to ever consider using one as my main gaming platform. I'd rather spend a wad of cash every 5 years or so than spend a wad of cash then having to constantly upgrade my kit.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) You wouldn't have to buy a tablet. Smartphones are essentially using the same chip sets as tablets with a slightly lower clock speed.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) The PS3 isn't a portable system, so you would need to buy a separate piece of hardware to match the portable gaming function of a smartphone/tablet. Even then, you wouldn't be playing the same games as your home console and would have to buy them separately. The advantage of the smartphone/tablet model would be that it's an all-in-one unified system.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) Clearly you're done with this argument but I'm still puzzled by your claim, So what's this? So it is what Apple claimed, and you just said that was misleading... Glad we agree on something.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) Here's an "unofficial" comparison of graphic performance between the new A5X SoC iPad (left column) and the Tegra 3 SoC Asus Transformer Prime 201 (right column) from the GLBenchmarks web site. The results were uploaded by community users of the GLBenchmark software. I highlighted the two benchmarks that you see referenced the most often when it comes to mobile gaming...
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) And do either of those two select results depict the A5X to be 4 times faster than Tegra 3? No.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) Apple made a very generalized claim. I'm sure there will be plenty of sites online that will be examining and speculating about what that claim may have been based on. Looking at the benchmarks though, it appears Tegra 3 does have some significant shortcomings in comparison.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) It is just as I said originally, a misleading claim with nothing to back it up. This is how they market and everyone just eats it up. You even said it was misleading yourself when you thought they had originally said two times, so why have you done a back flip and decided to downplay the statement by basically saying that Tegra 3 lags behind enough that exaggerating the delta at which it does lag is no big deal. It is a big deal, it's purposely misleading. I'm glad you stuck to the actual "game" type tests, but to reverse the situation using the type of marketing you seem to have no problem with, nVidia could say that the Tegra 3 is over 2 times faster than A5X because of that one fragment test. The real problem arises when you take these misleading generalized claims and attempt to extrapolate further comparisons with other hardware. You have to be very careful with marketing talk - It really has to be completely disregarded when you are doing a system comparison, hypothetical or otherwise.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) I was simply mistaken about the "2X" vs "4X" claim. I hadn't seen the actual presentation. There were quite a few sites talking about "2X" the performance, but that was specific to the iPad 2. That said, when I'm looking at those benchmarks, it's obvious that Tegra 3 has some gaping holes in it's performance levels. The fill test and triangle tests are well within the range of 4X better for the new iPad, and Tegra 3 can't even generate a benchmark for two of the high resolution tests. I think it's a good guess to say that the "4X" claim would be related to high resolution performance considering the emphasis on screen resolution with the latest iPad. But at the end of the day, neither of us know for sure what Apple used as a metric for "4X". And to be fair, Asus claims on the Transformer Prime web page that the Tegra 3 SoC delivers "3D graphics performance previously unseen on a tablet". My "extrapolation" to other hardware (like the 360 or the original MacBook Pro) is primarily based either on developer commentary (like from Epic in regards to the 360 vs. iPad) or on my own experience (OS X CoreDuo laptops vs. iPad).
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) The theoretical tests don't relate to real world as they only measure one aspect of the GPU. They are important but cannot be used as a claim of general superiority unless stated for what it is, such as "4x higher fillrate potential" or the like. They aren't "high resolution" tests, the offscreen tests are the highest resolution tests of GLbench 2.1. They are high quality rendering tests. High quality rendering: all tests with "High" quality settings require multi-sample anti-aliasing and at least 24 bits ofcolor- and Z-buffer depths. http://www.glbenchmark.com/tools.jsp?benchmark=glpro21 So I don't know what it is but something there the Tegra 3 isn't compatible with, not agreeing with, or perhaps it was something fixed in the 2.1.1 release of GLbench as mentioned at anand, http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/5563?cPage=5&all=False&sort=0&page=2&slug=qualcomms-snapdragon-s4-krait-vs-nvidias-tegra-3 Exactly, marketing talk and anecdotal evidence. Both purely subjective, potentially very bias, misleading and in no way scientific. There was another guy that used to post here with lots of anecdotal evidence to prove his points about black people and other enlightening revelations. Gotta love that anecdotal evidence!
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) I think it's pretty obvious that general superiority is established by those benchmarks as a whole set. The debate is whether or not Apple was being misleading with the "4X" graphic performance claim. Looking at those benchmarks, Tegra 3 does appear to have some major weak spots in comparison to the A5X. Those don't prove "4X", but they don't exactly support the idea that "4X" is purely marketing hype either. Tegra 3 has very real shortcomings for graphic performance. What's the evidence that proves "4X" is misleading? You haven't provided any other than your own personal opinion about how Apple markets it's products.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) Laptop Mag ran the same GL benchmarks... They don't seem to be saying that Apple was misleading anyone when it comes to the "4X" graphic performance after looking at the benchmark numbers.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) To say that general graphics performance is 4x faster is extremely vague. When providing no footnotes to divulge the tests done and at what settings, it is misleading. That simple. Nvidia or AMD never make such vague statements about performance relative to their competitor, they are more specific with their claims and always include footnotes. For example, if AMD were to act like Apple, they would have said a few years back with the 5870 that it had over 2x the "graphics performance" of the GTX480 because simply because of theoretical single precision compute potential. Yet to put this down as "graphics performance" with no specification as to what you are referring to would have been highly misleading. Ha! So the burden is on others to disprove the claim otherwise it is just their subjective opinion that the claim is misleading? No, they made the claim with no footnotes or clarification in the wording, so the claim is not backed up what so ever. It was purposely vague to create sensationalism - that is misleading.
Re: The New Ipad (Ipad 3? what the hell is the name of this thing) Who really cares if it's 4x or 2x? It's faster... and by quite a bit.