So Just How Much Improvement in Performance Do You Get With the iPad 2?

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked' target='_blank'>http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/...mp2-benchmarked</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Earlier this morning we published our first impressions on Apple's iPad 2, including analysis on camera quality and a dive into the architecture behind Apple's A5 SoC."</em></p><p><img height="468" src="http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tablets/apple/ipad2/_DSC0670_sm.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" width="600" /></p><p>What they found was that the iPad 2 was indeed 50% faster than the A4 chip in the original iPad, but they also wanted to test the claim regarding GPU. Is the iPad 2 really 9x faster than the original? This is a pretty thorough investigation of the claim, and an interesting read. I won't spoil the surprise.&nbsp;</p>

[Brad Adrian]

That definitely IS an interesting read, and one which is written so even I can understand it.

What I'm wondering, though, is the breakdown in terms of both TECHNICAL improvements and PRACTICAL improvements. What I mean is that the increases in speed are definitely significant on paper, but what does that translate to in terms of improvements I'll notice and need? For example, if a certain page can be rendered three times more quickly on the iPad2 does that really matter if the render time on the original iPad is 0.5 seconds? Is it useful (and even noticeable) if a page renders in 0.16 seconds as opposed to 0.5 seconds?

I'm just trying to wade through the data to determine how badly I really NEED the improvements. I'm pretty sure they're worth considering, but I need to know how much bang I'll be getting for my bucks.