New iPod Touch faster than iPhone 3G
The second-generation iPod Touch uses a slightly faster processor than the iPhone 3G.
(Credit: Apple)Apple appears to have upped the processing speed of the iPod Touch in order to help it go after the portable-game market.
Touch Arcade reports that the applications processor inside the second-generation iPod Touch unveiled in September is actually running faster than the processor inside the iPhone 3G, which runs at the same speed that the original iPhone and iPod Touch used. The new iPod Touch's ARM-based processor is running at 532MHz, while the iPhone 3G's processor runs at 412MHz.
A game developer interviewed by Touch Arcade noticed a huge difference in 3D-rendering speed as a result of the speed bump. As we remember fondly from our "megahertz madness" days of the Intel-AMD competition in the PC, processor speed is not the only measure of performance, but it is an important one.
With the arrival of the App Store, Apple has been marketing the latest iPod Touch as a gaming device in its latest round of commercials, almost completely ignoring the fact that it's a music and video player as well.
It seems that Apple has room to boost the clock speed of the processor to 620MHz, according to ARM's specifications, but that requires striking a balance between performance and battery life.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
Just bumping up the CPU clock has only marginal benefits for 3D performance. The main bottleneck by far is the GPU. iPhones (and the Touch) use the PowerVR MBX which can perform roughly 4 million polygons per second. Compare this to the GPU on Sony's PSP which can pump out 35 million (!) polygons per second. [**]
If improving 3D performance was really the intent, Apple would've been better served by bumping up the GPU clock rather than the CPU clock. Heck, the venerable PS2 only runs at 299 MHz. Clearly the CPU megahertz alone isn't that important of a metric.
Not to mention, for responsiveness one might be better off with more CPU cores rather than peak CPU speed. That's why portables like the PSP and Nintendo DS actually have two CPUs each (two ARMs in the case of the DS), in addition their GPU cores.
Frankly, unless Apple wants to dramatically redesign the Touch internals, they should forget about "improving 3D performance" by megahertz improvements. Instead they should just "do a Wii" and offer a different experience rather than attempting to compete on hardware performance.
[** These are max theoretical numbers for both platforms... not "real world" numbers]
For the most part, however, I think you're right in saying that Apple could improve other metrics that would bear more fruit than bumping the CPU speed.
Even the interviewed developer seemed to be skeptical that the CPU boost accounted for the performance difference, speculating that "GPU speeds could have been tweaked as well".
Where I can see the CPU helping is if the 3D app was bogged down in things like physics, collision detection, AI, etc. But generally speaking the GPU is the single biggest factor for 3D performance. You can always "simplify" your physics fidelity to make things go faster, but you can never pump out more polygons than the GPU limit.
While the touch has gaming ability, it is still a media player, which benefits from a faster processor more than a GPU, unless the GPU chipset has dedicated .264 decoding, and that dedicated decoding is faster than letting the CPU do it.
I think you're missing the point with this article.
People have already covered the GPU vs. CPU aspect adequately -- so no need for me rehash that.
In addition to that, the Touch and iPhone might be ok for casual gaming, but they're limited to just touch input and the accelerometer -- that's always going to limit the kind of games you can play on them. The type of games you're left with aren't the sort where polygons/second are of overriding importance. iPhone gaming will always have to stress other aspects of the game (social aspects, and Wii-like aspects) as opposed to any sort of serious gaming. That's why I think you're off the mark in thinking this speed bump is in any way gaming related.
Actually, all iPhone/iPod ship with a 600mhz CPU, down-clocked to 412/532mhz. My guess is, they have some internal benchmarks for battery life, and they set the clock to as high as they can, as long as the battery life is satisfied.
I have bought a new 2g last weekend and I was happy, it was fast and better than previous.
Than itunes ask me to upgrade to firmware 2.2 and somehow it failed.
Now my beautiful touch 2g is not working and I cannot recover it
I read so many useless help pages. Anyone at cnet had the problem and can post a solution?
thanks in advance, max
After being told I have to pay for the software update, I paid the first time, but now I downright refuse to pay again!
I paid a whopping $400 bucks for my 16 GB iPod Touch and Apple treats me like a 2nd class citizen while offering the same updates to iPhone users for free.
Apple has lost this round - I am not paying a dime for another useless update! :(
Is that clear? Hope so.
[Content edited to remove personal attack]
If the iPod Touch isn't classified as a computer platform, what is it classified as, a multimedia player? If so, then why are the updates free for the iPod (classic, nano, shuffle)?
I wouldn't pay for additional updates either... one doesn't pay for software updates, unless there is a major version change, so what's the difference with the Touch?
/jp/
This is where Microsoft completely outshines Apple. With each Zune software update, it's free and backwards compatible for all models.
Apple could have easily added Cover Flow to the 5g iPod, but nope, to get that, I had to buy a NEW iPod which is what Apple wanted. I eventually settled on the 2g iPod Touch because of the initial short comings of the Samsung Instinct. The iPod Touch takes care of the WiFi and apps that are missing from the Instinct.
But I was not going to buy the 6g iPod because my 5g works fine. If it had been Microsoft though, they would have released the software update that give me the same features that came standard on the 6g and put it on my 5g without paying a dime.
It amazes that Apple would charge for an iPod update... that's just ridiculous!
3. DS
2. PSP
1. Touch
I'm hooked on the Nintendo DS Lite though (never have to pay for an update because unlike Apple, Nintendo makes products that "just work").
- by 3pmstudios November 28, 2008 11:16 PM PST
- I wish it had external speakers.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(26 Comments)I recently developed a mix-and-match game, Henry and Hailey's preschool pals, based on my preschool son Henry as one of the lead characters. It has beautiful art and great sounds. It is geared for preschoolers so for them to hear the sounds on the iPod they need ear buds. Otherwise the iPod touch is great.