Comparing tablet chip performance has never been easy. Mobile benchmarks have mostly been limited to just a single platform, but now a new test by a respected outfit?albeit one that?s frequently been accused of pandering to Intel?puts ARM-based processors from Apple and Nvidia?ahead?of Intel?s silicon. ?BAPCo?s TabletMark V3, announced last week, shows that Google?s new Nexus 9 and Apple?s iPad Air 2 outperform an Atom-powered tablet from Lenovo.
The new benchmark is the first from BAPCo to support anything other than a Microsoft operating system. Previous iterations of TabletMark have supported Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows RT, but now version 3 finally adds iOS and Android compatibility.
The test suite is designed to measure real-world browsing, email, photo and video chores on tablets, and it’s already freely available in the Microsoft store and Android Play. The iOS version is finished, but it remains stuck in the famously slow Apple approval process.
In a recent press demonstration, BAPCo showed off the new TabletMark running on an Apple iPad Air 2 with its A8X chip; the Google Nexus 9 with its Nvdia Tegra K1; and a Lenovo Thinkpad 10 with a quad-core Intel Atom Z3795.
The real shocker is where Intel?s Bay Trail-based Atom Z3795 falls in line: last. Although it is slightly faster than the iPad 2 Air?s A8X in the browsing and email tests, it takes a distant third place in the photo and video workloads. The Tegra K1, meanwhile, actually represents Nvidia well by beating Intel?s Bay Trail chip. ?Yes, what we have are two ARM chips from Apple and Nvidia acing Intel?s top budget mobile chip. To anyone who?s been following the benchmarking wars, this might come as a bit of a surprise, as BAPCo has long been accused of favouring Intel parts.