AnandTech Testing Finds Apple’s A13 Chip ‘Essentially’ Matches Intel and AMD Desktop Performance

AnandTech has published its full review of Apple’s new iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro handsets. The review includes an in-depth review of the performance of the new handsets,

When they unveiled the new iPhone lineup back in September, Apple claimed the device’s new A13 processor would perform 20% faster than the previous processor, the A12. AnandTech’s testing backs up that claim.

During testing, the publication found that the A13 processor is indeed 20% faster than the A12, used in last year’s iPhone XR and iPhone XS lineups.

However, the review indicates the A13’s peak performance state draws more power than the A12’s, possibly leading to less efficient performance, and could make the new iPhone 11 lineup more sensitive to temperature and throttling.

In terms of power and efficiency, the A13 seemingly wasn’t a very successful iteration for Apple, at least when it comes to the efficiency at the chip’s peak performance state. The higher power draw should mean that the SoC and phone will be more prone to throttling and sensitive to temperatures.

It should be noted however that the review also notes that “on average and in daily workloads,” the A13 should operate more efficiently than the A12. The bigger power draw should only affect users when performing CPU-intensive tasks. The review notes that Apple has made some improvements to sustained performance:

Apple’s sustained performance score improvements are a lot more significant and reach 50% to 60% when compared to last year’s iPhones. As things would seem, Apple’s claims to have improved thermal dissipation for the SoC have worked out extremely well.

AnandTech says Apple’s chip “essentially” matches what’s offered by AMD and Intel on the desktop side of things:

Overall, in terms of performance, the A13 and the Lightning cores are extremely fast. In the mobile space, there’s really no competition as the A13 posts almost double the performance of the next best non-Apple SoC. Last year I’ve noted that the A12 was margins off the best desktop CPU cores. This year, the A13 has essentially matched best that AMD and Intel have to offer.

AnandTech’s full review is available here.

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