A12 Bionic vs A10 Fusion

We compared the 6-core Apple A12 Bionic (Apple A12 GPU) with the older 4-core A10 Fusion (PowerVR GT7600) SoC. Here you will find the pros and cons of each chip, technical specs, and comprehensive tests in benchmarks, like AnTuTu and Geekbench.

Review

General comparison of performance, power consumption, and other indicators
CPU Performance
Single and multi-core processor tests
Gaming Performance
GPU performance in games and OpenCL/Vulkan
Battery life
Efficiency of battery consumption
NanoReview Score
Overall chip score

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of Apple A12 Bionic
  • Has a smaller size transistor (7 versus 16 nm)
  • Performs 2.3x better in floating-point computations
  • Supports 129% higher memory bandwidth (34.1 against 14.9 GB/s)
  • Higher GPU frequency (~73%)
  • Announced 2-years and 1-month later
  • Has 2 more cores
  • Shows significantly better (up to 52%) AnTuTu 10 score – 643K vs 422K
  • 6% higher CPU clock speed (2490 vs 2340 MHz)
  • Better instruction set architecture
Promotion

Benchmarks

Performance tests in popular benchmarks

AnTuTu 10

The AnTuTu Benchmark measures CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O performance in different scenarios
A12 Bionic +52%
643688
422911
CPU 180501 145680
GPU 203202 92807
Memory 123963 67381
UX 132209 115644
Total score 643688 422911

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
A12 Bionic +47%
1299
Multi-Core Score
A12 Bionic +116%
2844
1319
Asset compression 108.3 MB/sec 47.8 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 61.7 pages/sec 38.7 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 78.6 Mpixels/sec 41.8 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 21.4 images/sec 12.1 images/sec
HDR 89.6 Mpixels/sec 47.3 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 10.6 images/sec 3.5 images/sec
Photo processing 36.4 images/sec 12 images/sec
Ray tracing 3.35 Mpixels/sec 1.53 Mpixels/sec
Promotion

3DMark

A cross-platform benchmark that assesses graphics performance in Vulkan (Metal)
3DMark Wild Life Performance
A12 Bionic +102%
5207
2579
Stability 69% 62%
Graphics test 31 FPS 15 FPS
Score 5207 2579

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of A12 Bionic and A10 Fusion

CPU

Architecture 2x 2.49 GHz – Vortex
4x 1.6 GHz – Tempest
2x 2.34 GHz – Hurricane
2x 1.05 GHz – Zephyr
Cores 6 4
Frequency 2490 MHz 2340 MHz
Instruction set ARMv8.3-A ARMv8-A
L1 cache 128 KB 64 KB
L2 cache 8 MB 3 MB
L3 cache - 4 MB
Process 7 nanometers 16 nanometers
Transistor count 6.9 billion 3.3 billion
TDP 6 W 5 W
Manufacturing TSMC TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Apple A12 GPU PowerVR GT7600
Architecture Apple GPU PowerVR Series7XT (Rogue)
GPU frequency 1125 MHz 650 MHz
Execution units 4 6
Shading units 64 32
Total shaders 256 192
FLOPS 576 Gigaflops 249.6 Gigaflops
Vulkan version - 1.1
OpenCL version - 1.2

Memory

Memory type LPDDR4X LPDDR4
Memory frequency 2133 MHz 1333 MHz
Bus 4x 16 Bit 2x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 34.1 Gbit/s 14.9 Gbit/s
Max size 4 GB 4 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Neural processor (NPU) Neural Engine Apple M10
Storage type NVMe NVMe
Max display resolution 2688 x 1242 2048 x 1536
Max camera resolution 1x 32MP, 2x 12MP 1x 32MP, 2x 12MP
Video capture 4K at 60FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video playback 4K at 60FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video codecs H.264, H.265, Motion JPEG H.264, H.265, VC-1, Motion JPEG
Audio codecs AAC, AAC‑LC, Apple Lossless, HE‑AAC, Linear PCM, AAX и AAX+, HE‑AAC v2, MP3 AAC, AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV

Connectivity

Modem Intel XMM 7560 Qualcomm MDM9645M
4G support LTE Cat. 18 LTE Cat. 12
5G support No No
Download speed Up to 1000 Mbps Up to 600 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 350 Mbps Up to 100 Mbps
Wi-Fi 5 5
Bluetooth 5.0 4.2
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo

Info

Announced September 2018 September 2016
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number APL1W81 APL1W24

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
496 (83.9%)
95 (16.1%)
Total votes: 591

Comments

Please give your opinion on the comparison of A10 Fusion and A12 Bionic, or ask any questions
Avatar
Carl 21 March 2021 15:53
Will the A12 increase the performance when streaming vs. the A10 ?
+25 Reply
Avatar
John Vore 20 April 2021 19:57
Yes with the Apple TV, streaming will be much better. A12 is in a whole new class.
+4 Reply
Promotion