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Is the iPad's CPU adaquate for web browsing?

S

SingleDuvet

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 21, 2010
17
26
The iphone 3G CPU is not fast enough for a pleasant web browsing experience.

It takes a relatively long time to load a page, even though my internet connection is 20mbit.

Can the iPad load webpages as fast as a macbook (or other ordinary computer)?

Do you feel a delay of any kind compared to your normal web browsing experience?
 
SingleDuvet said:
The iphone 3G CPU is not fast enough for a pleasant web browsing experience.

It takes a relatively long time to load a page, even though my internet connection is 20mbit.

Can the iPad load webpages as fast as a macbook (or other ordinary computer)?

Do you feel a delay of any kind compared to your normal web browsing experience?
Click to expand...

Yes. Don't buy an iPad ever. And most importantly, never, ever read the reviews regarding the performance of the iPad and how great it is for browsing the web.
 
For web browsing it's great. For PDF's on the other hand, even with good reader it's shockingly slow.
 
At home I am connected via wireless "n" and in coffee shops usually by "g" and find the speed faster than my MacBook. When on 3G I have the expected slower but adequate time downloading pages.
 
SingleDuvet said:
The iphone 3G CPU is not fast enough for a pleasant web browsing experience.
Click to expand...

I think the 3G's CPU is likely more than adequate.

It takes a relatively long time to load a page, even though my internet connection is 20mbit.
Click to expand...

But your iPhone connection to your router isn't at 20 mBit. The iPhone 3G isn't capable of more than 4-5 mbit/sec, as born-out by multiple tests. Do a Google search. And I've confirmed this myself.


Can the iPad load webpages as fast as a macbook (or other ordinary computer)?
Click to expand...

Sadly, no, and I don't know exactly why. May be limits on the number of simultaneous downloads.

I doubt that it is CPU speed, though. I've gotten up to 30mbit/sec in speed tests on the iPad. I haven't done a proper test, though, to see what the speed is to a local server - justd one of those "Internet speed tests" that are essentially useless. (You can be sure that you are getting AT LEAST the number that you get from the test, but it CAN'T tell you the MAXIMUM speed, because there are too many factors outside of your control).
 
I watched a review video where it took an iPad 16 seconds to load CNN.com via wifi.

It took 4 seconds to load CNN.com on my macbook =/
(my first time to go to that website)

I guess it is unacceptable then. I'll have to wait for the next version, hopefully it is faster.
 
It's not just download speeds, the device also has to do a certain amount of rendering of the html (etc) code. In this sense I'm not sure why people would expect mobile devices to be as fast as the CPU on a laptop or desktop computer.
 
SingleDuvet said:
I watched a review video where it took an iPad 16 seconds to load CNN.com via wifi.

It took 4 seconds to load CNN.com on my macbook =/
(my first time to go to that website)

I guess it is unacceptable then. I'll have to wait for the next version, hopefully it is faster.
Click to expand...

Something is wrong with that video then. I load cnn.com on my iPad in 3-5 seconds. This is over wireless N to to a 15M FIOS connection.
 
SingleDuvet said:
I watched a review video where it took an iPad 16 seconds to load CNN.com via wifi.

It took 4 seconds to load CNN.com on my macbook =/
(my first time to go to that website)

I guess it is unacceptable then. I'll have to wait for the next version, hopefully it is faster.
Click to expand...

You connection is screwed or something. I have a 200Mbps connection and CNN loads in about 4 seconds. My MBP is faster but still less than 6 seconds is pretty fast. Both are running the N standard. You can always turn off all security and get rid of the overhead associated with wifi. This should gain some speed as well as some unwelcome friends.
 
Speed is more than adequate here on pretty much every site I visit. Why? No loading of Flash and Java crapplets. It would be even faster if Mobile Safari had an adblocking plugin.

It absolutely flies if I go through the Glimmerblocker proxy on my iMac.
 
It's important to note that although pages may load fairly quickly they'll need to reload often (in Safari) because of the caching problem.

I doubt the OP was ever seriously considering getting an iPad.
 
If I remember correctly the 3G iPhone has a 600mhz processor ... The iPad 1ghz and the ipad has double the memory so yes it does surf faster.

It definitely seems faster than my 3GS (800mhz)
 
I'm waiting for that, 200/200 glassfibre.
That will beat the *&^%$$##)) out of my ADSL 10mb connection :D

Ow and on-toppic: in europe the CNN website did take me around 6 seconds on my macbook pro via an N-connection and around 9 seconds on the ipad with the same n-connection.
Not bad for a small 1GHz processor I guess.
 
If the browsing experience on the ipad was unacceptable
I don't think they would sell many.
 
My iPad is definitely slower loading webpages, sometimes annoyingly slow. This is readily evident when you scroll down and see a couple of seconds of a grid of an unloaded page. After a couple of seconds it loads, then you scroll down again and there is the grid again.
 
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