iPhone 5s impresses in early graphics benchmarks

Apple A7 chip (Secure Enclave 001)

One of the big new features in the iPhone 5s is its A7 processor with ’64-bit desktop-class architecture.’ What these buzzwords essentially mean is that the thing is fast—Apple says the CPU is 40x faster and graphics are 56x faster than the original iPhone.

But that doesn’t really tell us much in the way of performance, does it? Luckily, an early graphics benchmark for the handset surfaced this morning that gives us a better idea of how the 5s will perform. And the results show significant gains over the iPhone 5…

MacRumors points a comparison between the results of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5 on the Egypt HD 2.5 benchmark. Note how the score on the offscreen 1080p test goes from 29.8 fps (frames per second) on the 5 to 56.0 on the 5s. Nearly double—nice.

iphone_5s_5_gfxbench

Of course, we’ve seen first-hand that benchmarks can’t be taken at face value. They merely show what a device can do under optimal conditions, which isn’t indicative of real-world usage. In this instance, for example, the test has been optimized for the new A7.

Still the results are pretty impressive. And eventually, most developers will have optimized their apps and games for the new 64-bit processor. But until then, we’re going to count this as an example of, not necessarily proof of, the 5s’ graphic performance.