Apple A14 Bionic shows minor performance gain

Even though Apple didn't announce any new iPhones during its September event, Apple detailed the center of the future phones - the Apple A14 chipset. supported Apple's claims at the announcement we estimated it to possess a 17% faster CPU and eight better GPU than its predecessor and a newly surfaced benchmark shows these numbers are close enough.

An AnTuTu benchmark run on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, reveals 16% higher CPU score and 4% better GPU result. There's however a more pronounced boost in memory speeds - 22%, but overall the performance gains are clearly minor.

The combined results of 572,333 points might sound low, considering the Snapdragon 865+ Android competition goes above the 600,000 mark, but cross-platform benchmark comparison isn't A level playing field because there are differences in how the tasks are executed.

However, the comparison to the A13 should be fully relevant and it shows that the world's first 5nm chipset won't bring the performance leap many were expecting of it. There are three explanations that come to mind.

For one Apple may need prioritized battery draw over outright performance making the A14 use less power, while achieving what's roughly an equivalent performance. That's presumably it since the A14 Bionic pioneer - the Apple iPad Air 4th generation - has an equivalent battery life as its predecessor despite packing an 8% smaller cell.

Alternatively, the move to 5nm chipsets won't yield the gains that we all hoped. While the just about 30% smaller process should theoretically deliver great efficiency boost, it's going to take time until it's fully utilized.

Finally, this might be an engineering sample and therefore the performance of the ultimate units are often much better . However with Apple itself claiming modest gains on the brink of these results that looks like a really long shot.