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iOS 11 performance on A8 devices (so far)
- Thread starter Yebubbleman
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Updated link. You are right about those devices and the 2 GB RAM though, regret not waiting for the 6s now which will definitely last longer.
This is why I don’t understand how the 5S could possibly run iOS 11 so much worse than the 6.
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I do forget how much beastlier the A8X is compared to even the iPad mini 4's A8. Though I wonder how much of Apple's support for the older hardware is on raw performance versus chipset features.
iOS 9 to 10 seemed noticeable on my mini 2.
My sixth gen iPod touch always had iOS 9 on it, so I can't compare how iOS 8 was on it. The mini 4 and iPhone 6s Plus both ship with no older than iOS 9, so they can't be compared. However, with the iPad Air 2, and every A5 based device I had seemed to be a hair faster on 9 than on 8. But 8 was buggy as all hell, so it might've just been that 9 was less buggy than it was less sluggish.
I didn't realize that NVMe was a factor. Is that an iPhone 6s and iPad Pro thing or is it an A9/A9X thing? It seems to make a ton of difference.
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Also, not that I'm disbelieving, but I've seen a lot of "the A8 series chips were only marginal bumps from the A7 series" and "A9 was the really huge bump" notions tossed around here; are there any clear obviously posted statistics somewhere where I can see that point illustrated? Again, I'm not skeptical, it'd just be cool to see that illustrated somewhere.
Similarly, how much from the A9 does the A8X have? Or is the A8X simply near the realm of the A9 simply because it packed in more cores to make up for, in terms of sheer power, what the A9 and A9X was able to do with architectural improvements? Am curious.
FWIW, 4K HEVC recorded on the iPhone 7 Plus in iOS 11 is completely unplayable on the iPad Air 2. Slideshow, due to pure software playback. It would likely be even worse on the iPhone 6.
Obviously, it's completely smooth playback on the iPhone 7 Plus (iOS 11), and it should also be smooth on the iPhone 6s (iOS 11) because it's hardware playback on those two generations.
https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks Check the multi-core scores, You'll see the 5s is about double the 5, the 6s is about double the 5s, but the 6 is only a marginal increase. You can also see that the Air 2 is classed with the A9 devices. However, if you switch to single-core you'll see that a single A8X core scores more similarly to the A8, so it looks like that hypothesis is correct.
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Yep. also; the 4 doubled ram, the 5 doubled ram, the 6... had the same, had to wait for the the 6s to double the ram.
And the 6 and 6+ especially needed a boost because of the extra screen resolution meant more video ram was needed. That’s why in one sense it has less usable ram than the 5s
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Yep it’s supposedly the reason why eg iPhones 6s beat a newer flagship android phone using a test which goes through say 30 apps, loading each one at a time and waiting till it’s fully loaded before moving to the next and timing how long the whole process takes. It’s not that the processing power is that much greater (or even greater at all) but the storage speed - probably the most important factor in this particular test. Not that there aren’t other ways to measure performance but it’s one way!
My 6 takes 6 seconds to load Spotify from scratch - 6 seconds to get past the splash screen. GF’s se (nvme) takes 1 second. (Literally just timed these now). A9 isn’t 6x faster than A8 and yet...
[doublepost=1504932938][/doublepost]
I think someone else has already linked to some benchmarks. What I’ll add is that it was clear from Apple’s own marketing at the special event introducing it. I recall both the 5’s A6 and 5s’s A7 introduced as ‘2x’ faster CPU than the previous. That’s a 100% increase. The 6’s A8 was introduced as only being 25% faster. The 6s/A9 the year after jumped to more impressive 60% faster.
Interestingly (if I can say that), x*1.25*1.6 =2x. So that 2x increase was achieved over 2 generations instead of 1 seen previously.
The 7/A10 was marketed as 40% faster. So although we’re seeing a general decline in generational performance increases, we haven’t had as poor an increase as the 6 had in recent memory.
It’s also worth mentioning that these recent generations have tried to improve the power consumption so that the CPUs are actually able to run at their max speed for longer before overheating occurs and they are downclocked, so comparing them against older generations in such terms might not give the full picture but it certainly gives you an idea.
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That’s definitely a big reason. If you looks at those tests you see Android, especially Samsung’s spin on it, is horrendously bad at memory management too though and gets punished for having to touch that slower storage again, where it remains in RAM on iOS. Even with the Note 8 having twice as much RAM as the 7+ the Note 8 consistently ejects apps from memory where the iPhone doesn’t.
This has to be embarrassing. This video was posted in the Note 8 thread. It’s really not even close, even with almost a year separating the phones. The 7s and 8 will be much faster too.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/samsung-note-8.2037589/page-56#post-24976417
So when iOS 11 is released should I update my iPhone 5s to it? Or would that slow it down too much?
Some say yes and some say no. I would wait a little while and check these boards to see what others are saying. Some find the word slow to be a symantic argument as slow for one person may not be too bad to another. I find iOS 10 on my 5s to be pretty good but I know others would disagree with me.
I have also an iPhone 5s in iOS 11.2 and its not even that bad lol, however the most saddest thing back on iOS 8 there are times that iPhone 5S and 6 are same speed when launching apps. But in iOS 11, iPhone 6 looks like 6 times faster when launching apps unlike my iPhone 5s. They are both 1gb ram right?? They should have the exact same speed, same startup test, but my 5s suffers more a lot. While my sisters iPhone 6 slowed down but not as bad as 5s.
Yep. also; the 4 doubled ram, the 5 doubled ram, the 6... had the same, had to wait for the the 6s to double the ram.
And the 6 and 6+ especially needed a boost because of the extra screen resolution meant more video ram was needed. That’s why in one sense it has less usable ram than the 5s
[doublepost=1504931430][/doublepost]
Yep it’s supposedly the reason why eg iPhones 6s beat a newer flagship android phone using a test which goes through say 30 apps, loading each one at a time and waiting till it’s fully loaded before moving to the next and timing how long the whole process takes. It’s not that the processing power is that much greater (or even greater at all) but the storage speed - probably the most important factor in this particular test. Not that there aren’t other ways to measure performance but it’s one way!
My 6 takes 6 seconds to load Spotify from scratch - 6 seconds to get past the splash screen. GF’s se (nvme) takes 1 second. (Literally just timed these now). A9 isn’t 6x faster than A8 and yet...
[doublepost=1504932938][/doublepost]
I think someone else has already linked to some benchmarks. What I’ll add is that it was clear from Apple’s own marketing at the special event introducing it. I recall both the 5’s A6 and 5s’s A7 introduced as ‘2x’ faster CPU than the previous. That’s a 100% increase. The 6’s A8 was introduced as only being 25% faster. The 6s/A9 the year after jumped to more impressive 60% faster.
Interestingly (if I can say that), x*1.25*1.6 =2x. So that 2x increase was achieved over 2 generations instead of 1 seen previously.
The 7/A10 was marketed as 40% faster. So although we’re seeing a general decline in generational performance increases, we haven’t had as poor an increase as the 6 had in recent memory.
It’s also worth mentioning that these recent generations have tried to improve the power consumption so that the CPUs are actually able to run at their max speed for longer before overheating occurs and they are downclocked, so comparing them against older generations in such terms might not give the full picture but it certainly gives you an idea.
In the real world, A8 was actually closer to 12% faster most tasks than A7
And A9 was closer to 70% faster most tasks vs A8
Really is strange how the 6 runs iOS 11 better.
the A8 is really just a slightly faster A7 on a smaller process. That’s it.
The ram in the 5s and 6 are identical down to speed and type of ram used.
Quite the peculiar situation isn’t it?
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Yeah you’re right. Not only do they both have 1GB of ram, but they are the exact same type of ram right down to the speed. It’s strange.
The A8 is almost identical to the A7, minus the smaller process and clock speed increase.
When I say identical I mean pipelines, cache, the whole deal - the architecture itself. The A7 was a huge improvement over the A6, and the A9 was also a huge improvement over the A8
But the A7 and A8 are literally twins just one is smaller and a bit more athletic.
Those are two of the most similar chips Apple has designed.
It’s strange. I do think the 5s and 6 plus are comparable in speed though. I remember back in iOS 8 days the 5s was the faster device!
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I've played with an iPad mini 4 and a sixth generation iPod touch with iOS 11 at the Apple Store. Feels exactly like an iOS device that is one processor generation above the generation at the limit of being able to run that version of iOS. Which is to say exactly like the A7-based iPad mini 2 felt with iOS 10. Also that the A9 is my personal cutoff for whether or not I want to go to iOS 11.
A7 devices should stay away from iOs 11. A7 has first generation or the weakest specs to run 64 bit, its m7 compressor is NOT POWER sufficient. A8 or newer able to handle iOS 11 based on my survey at school those who own iPhone 7 and lower that updated to iOS 11...
A7 is power hungry, GPU HUNGRY it will drains battery faster.. unlike A8/A9 that fixed its hardware to became more power efficient when it comes to battery
A7 is power hungry, GPU HUNGRY it will drains battery faster.. unlike A8/A9 that fixed its hardware to became more power efficient when it comes to battery
Is that why there are those with iPhone 7 Plus phones even complaining of battery and/or other issues?