NVIDIA Tegra 4 Benchmarks Show Incredible Speed

A set of new benchmarks of the upcoming NVIDIA Tegra 4 show the chip is a big improvement over the previous iteration the Tegra 3.

Engadget recorded the benchmarks at Mobile World Congress from a reference Tegra 4 tablet NVIDIA had on display at the show. The publication then compared those numbers to similar benchmarks from the Sony Xperia Tablet S and the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity, both tablets that use the previous generation NVIDIA Tegra 3.

The result show the Tegra 4 performs better in every single test Engadget threw at it. In every test the Tegra 4 scores were at least double the scores from the other two tablets. Overall, that means Tegra 4 tablets will have better performance than current Tegra 3 tablets.

Perhaps the most intriguing benchmark run on the tablet is SunSpider, which measures the web browsing speed of the tablet. The Tegra 4 reference tablet was able to run through the entire test in just 499ms (milliseconds), which is less than a quarter of the time of the Sony Xperia Tablet S.

The Tegra 4 tablet’s time even beats the fourth generation iPad which averages 865ms in testing. That means Tegra 4 tablets will load webpages faster than the current full-size iPad. That’s quite impressive.

The other tests are similarly impressive as scores in the 40,000 range in CF-Bench and Quadrant scores above 16,000 are simply unheard of.

While the numbers don’t mean much to average users, users should have no problem seeing the difference in the tablets. The numbers mean Android should run more smoothly and apps should load faster.

The benchmarks also mean the Tegra 4’s 72 graphics cores can push out better graphics than the Tegra 3. Current games will run more smoothly on the new processor, and new games can have much more detail with the new processor. NVIDIA’s Project Shield shows off the gaming possibilities, especially with upcoming games such as Dead on Arrival 2.

The Tegra 4 should start to appear in devices later this year around August and September. NVIDIA Project Shield, one of the first devices to use the chip, should come to stores by July of this year.