Basemark's Cross-Platform GPU Test: iPhone 14 Pro Beats Steam Deck - Tom's Hardware

Basemark introduced its new GPUScore Sacred Path cross-platform benchmark that lets users comparison wholly antithetic GPU architectures moving connected antithetic operating systems. Our GPU benchmarks hierarchy is constricted to Windows 11 testing, but what if you privation to cognize however the best graphics cards stack up against your smartphone? Now you can.

To springiness a fewer examples, Sacred Path shows however Apple's A16 GPU stacks up against Steam Deck's GPU and Samsung's Galaxy S22+ GPU arsenic good arsenic however show of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 relates to that of Intel's Arc A770 and Apple's M1 Max. Of course, with immoderate benchmark that has to enactment crossed a wide dispersed of hardware capabilities, determination are caveats. But let's spot what the numbers say.

There are rather a fewer large hardware graphics platforms for PCs and mobile devices. These see AMD's integrated and discrete GPUs, Apple's PowerVR-derived integrated graphics processors, Arm's Mali graphics solutions, Imagination's PowerVR-based graphics solutions, Intel's standalone Arc Alchemist and integrated Xe-LP GPUs, Nvidia's discrete graphics processors, Qualcomm's Adreno graphics for mobile applications, Samsung RDNA 2-based built-in GPU cores, and a fig of different platforms.

Formally, each of these GPUs are designed to alteration high-performance gaming, though high-end mobile and high-end PC are evidently rather antithetic targets. All the architectures person their ain pros and cons, and successful galore cases they tally nether antithetic operating systems utilizing antithetic APIs (application programming interfaces). That makes it precise hard to find however 1 GPU stacks up against another, since it is astir intolerable to bash an apples-to-apples — oregon Apples-to-desktops — comparison.

Basemark's cross-platform Sacred Path is designed to wide distant immoderate of the confusion, arsenic it performs precisely the aforesaid workload connected each the assorted GPUs (assuming the trial is tally utilizing the authoritative autochthonal solution of 2560x1440). To marque the benchmark much applicable for antithetic devices, it supports assorted show optimization techniques, including adaptable complaint shading, precocious customized shaders, Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion (GTAO), and temporal anti-aliasing.

Judging by results demonstrated by high-end gaming graphics cards, we tin reason that Basemark's Sacred Path loves earthy compute performance. The much FP32 teraflops you have, the amended your results volition be. AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT is precise adjacent to the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, but the GeForce RTX 3090 is unrivalled.

Sadly, determination are nary RTX 4090 submissions conscionable yet. Jarred ran it but it failed to taxable (perhaps the strategy presently has a whitelist of known GPUs and the 4090 isn't connected it). Manual (custom) investigating utilizing the authoritative settings gave a effect of 48,709 implicit the ~4 2nd run, which astatine slightest seems to beryllium successful the close ballpark. At the aforesaid time, a trial that completes successful seconds means that the GPU isn't adjacent remotely warmed up earlier the trial is over. (Where's my brackish shaker?)

Midrange and high-end mobile gaming graphics processors don't person arsenic overmuch oomph arsenic high-end desktop cards. Nonetheless, they each — AMD's Navi 22, Intel's ACM-G10, and Nvidia's GA104 — bash rather well. Intel's Arc A770 is 11% down Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, arsenic different constituent of reference.

Meanwhile, assuming that Apple's M1 Ultra scales its graphics show truly good (the M1 Ultra consists of 2 M1 Max SoCs connected together), we would expect its show to beryllium connected par with that of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070, which is not atrocious for an integrated graphics processor.

Owners of entry-level GPUs person not submitted galore results truthful far, oregon astatine slightest they're not showing up. Fundamentally, the much teraflops a GPU has, the amended it performs successful Sacred Path.

Apple's M1 Max (an iGPU) and Nvidia's GA106 successful the signifier of desktop GeForce RTX 3050 pb the battalion here. Meanwhile, Intel's standalone Arc A380 tin hardly support up with Apple's M1 Pro integrated GPU. Even Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 for laptops is importantly faster than the Intel Arc A380.

When it comes to cross-platform benchmarking, handhelds, ultra-portables, and iGPUs are arguably the astir absorbing categories arsenic they includes aggregate hardware and bundle architectures arsenic good arsenic antithetic form-factors.

Since Apple uses its M1 and M2 system-on-chips for its tablets, it's tenable to see them into this examination adjacent though they tin powerfulness full-fledged PCs similar MacBook Air/MacBook Pro. After all, AMD's Ryzen SoCs with higher-end GPUs are besides designed for this precise purpose. Meanwhile, Apple's M1 and M2 iGPUs are faster than AMD's Cezanne iGPU by 40%–80%. 

Basemark's Sacred Path benchmark tin so beryllium utilized to trial each kinds of graphics processors, from humble GPUs aimed astatine smartphones and each the mode to monstrous graphics cards that tin beryllium utilized not conscionable for games but besides arsenic abstraction heaters oregon AI supercomputers.

The bundle produces accordant and repeatable results astir of the time, and it heavy depends connected the compute show of modern GPUs. While that mightiness beryllium utile connected immoderate level arsenic a show metric, bash support successful caput that a 1.15GB benchmark that tin implicit successful seconds connected the fastest GPUs volition ne'er adequately amusement the differences betwixt GPUs that mightiness person anyplace from 1GB to 24GB (or more) VRAM. In this test, earthy teraflops wins the game, adjacent though existent crippled titles besides beryllium connected graphics representation capacity, representation bandwidth, and different factors.

The benchmark besides doesn't usage ray tracing successful a bid to enactment connected each graphics processors from the past decennary oregon more, truthful it cannot show each the benefits that leading-edge GPUs for PCs support. There are besides immoderate fluctuation-related hiccups with immoderate platforms, but that's capable for this look astatine the vagaries of cross-platform "universal" GPU testing.

Anton Shilov is simply a Freelance News Writer astatine Tom’s Hardware US. Over the past mates of decades, helium has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech manufacture trends.