A12 Bionic vs A10 Fusion

We compared the 6-core Apple A12 Bionic (Apple A12 Bionic 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/Vulcan
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
  • Performs 4.9x better in floating-point computations
  • Has a smaller size transistor (7 versus 16 nm)
  • Shows significantly better (up to 75%) AnTuTu 9 score – 530K vs 302K
  • Announced 2-years and 1-month later
  • Has 2 more cores
  • Higher GPU frequency (~25%)
  • 6% higher CPU clock speed (2490 vs 2340 MHz)
  • Better instruction set architecture
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Benchmarks

Performance tests in popular benchmarks

AnTuTu 9

The AnTuTu Benchmark measures CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O performance in different scenarios
A12 Bionic +75%
530181
302824
CPU 143402 94978
GPU 186891 92122
Memory 91638 41888
UX 107048 72094
Total score 530181 302824

GeekBench 5

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
A12 Bionic +45%
1131
Multi-Core Score
A12 Bionic +108%
2935
1410
Image compression 132.8 Mpixels/s 65.5 Mpixels/s
Face detection 14.5 images/s 10.2 images/s
Speech recognition 67.8 words/s 26.1 words/s
Machine learning 54.1 images/s 27.5 images/s
Camera shooting 14.6 images/s 14.3 images/s
HTML 5 3.27 Mnodes/s 1.83 Mnodes/s
SQLite 745 Krows/s 427.2 Krows/s

3DMark

A cross-platform benchmark that assesses graphics performance in Vulkan (Metal)
3DMark Wild Life Performance
A12 Bionic +98%
5231
2640
Stability 69% 67%
Graphics test 31 FPS 15 FPS
Score 5231 2640

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

Graphics

GPU name Apple A12 Bionic GPU PowerVR GT7600
Architecture - Rogue
GPU frequency 1125 MHz 900 MHz
Execution units 32 6
Shading units 256 196
FLOPS 560 Gigaflops 115 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.1 1.0
OpenCL version 2.0 2.0
DirectX version 12 12

Memory

Memory type LPDDR4X LPDDR4
Memory frequency 2133 MHz -
Bus 1x 64 Bit -
Max bandwidth 34.1 Gbit/s -
Max size 12 GB 3 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Neural processor (NPU) Yes No
Storage type NVMe NVMe
Max display resolution 2688 x 1242 2048 x 1536
Max camera resolution 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 - 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 150 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 -

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
473 (84%)
90 (16%)
Total votes: 563

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 ?
+21 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
Avatar
Guest User 08 October 2020 11:13
Is it worth buying ipad 8th generation rather than high end android tablets?
+120 Reply
Avatar
Yab 21 January 2021 06:28
Sure even ipad 7th have a10 old chipset that’s to laggy on tough games
+27 Reply
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