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cp1160

macrumors regular
Feb 20, 2007
150
136
Here's the official line on the processor:

The iPad mini 2021 uses the A15 Bionic chipset, which is also in the iPhone 13 series. According to Apple, this will include a 40% faster CPU and an 80% faster GPU than previous iterations of the device.

The clear variation between the A14 and A15 is in graphics processing: While the A15 processor in the iPhone 13 has four GPU cores, just like the A14, the A15 processor used in the iPhone 13 Pro and the new iPad mini has five GPU cores.

Basically the same is a little misleading in some aspects, and the title is a bit of clickbait. Better GPU is an important difference in driving the iPad Mini screen.
 
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donth8

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 25, 2015
106
108
Basically the same is a little misleading in some aspects, and the title is a bit of clickbait. Better GPU is an important difference in driving the iPad Mini screen.
When it comes to the cpu scores in geekbench they are the same is what I meant. I agree the 5 core gpu will be very nice.
 
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rui no onna

Contributor
Oct 25, 2013
14,920
13,268
Here's the official line on the processor:

The iPad mini 2021 uses the A15 Bionic chipset, which is also in the iPhone 13 series. According to Apple, this will include a 40% faster CPU and an 80% faster GPU than previous iterations of the device.

Where did those numbers come from? As I recall, the numbers mentioned in the keynote were in comparison to other ARM chipsets.

Edit:
Looks like it's on the iPad mini page. In this case, previous generation is Apple A12.

Air 4 A14 vs Air 3 A12:
40% faster CPU, 30% faster GPU

mini 6 A15 vs mini 5 A12:
40% faster CPU, 80% faster GPU

So same CPU performance as A14 but with ~40% (180% / 130%) faster GPU.
 
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GMShadow

macrumors 68020
Jun 8, 2021
2,127
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The A15 in the iPhones runs at a little over 3.2GHz, so they seem to have downclocked the iPad while giving it the extra GPU core to help push pixels.

If it had 6GB of RAM, I'd say these were 13 Pro chips that didn't quite bin out to run at the full clock, but that clock speed appears to have been a deliberate choice, and an odd one at that.
 
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HarryWild

macrumors 68020
Oct 27, 2012
2,050
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The A15 in the iPhones runs at a little over 3.2GHz, so they seem to have downclocked the iPad while giving it the extra GPU core to help push pixels.

If it had 6GB of RAM, I'd say these were 13 Pro chips that didn't quite bin out to run at the full clock, but that clock speed appears to have been a deliberate choice, and an odd one at that.
Even thru both have the A15 inside, Apple made sure that the iPhone 13 would be considerable faster then the Mini 6. Sort of to bad that they did turn down the speed of the A15 SoC on the Mini 6.
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
13,555
26,194
I can see this as a binning/cost decision. Turning down the clock by 10% likely significantly increases yields. The chips selected for iPad mini don’t need to be as power efficient as the ones for iPhone either.

If this were a marketing decision, Apple would let it be known the A15 Pro is different from 5-core A15 mini. Since this isn’t the case, it seems to be an engineering choice.
 
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