A17 Pro in the iPad mini 7 is slimmed down
Apple's new compact tablet is ready for Apple Intelligence. However, the built-in A17 Pro SoC does not run at full power. There are reasons for this.
iPad mini 7 with snail: slower than necessary?
(Image: Apple / Mac & i)
An iPhone that is faster than an iPad? This is definitely possible with Apple. The iPad mini 7 presented this week comes with the A17 Pro SoC familiar from the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. However, as it now turns out, this has been binned. This means that the iPhone Pro models from last year deliver (slightly) more performance than the new compact tablet from this year.
Points deducted for the iPad mini 7
Apple's specifications for the iPad mini 7 already indicated that this would be the case. They state that the small tablet has a 6-core CPU but only a 5-core GPU. The iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, on the other hand, have a 6-core CPU with a 6-core GPU. The iPad mini 7 therefore has one graphics core less. The practical impact is likely to be relatively small.
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Nevertheless, the first Geekbench benchmarks show the differences. The iPad mini 7 achieves a single-core score of 2840, a multi-core score of 6982 and a metal GPU score of 25895. In contrast, the iPhone 15 Pro scores 2888, 7169 and 27144 points – so the additional core makes a difference. However, the benchmarks also show that both devices are equipped with 8 GB of RAM – which should also be necessary for Apple Intelligence.
Committee still to be used
Binning means that Apple has given the iPad mini 7 an A17 Pro in which one of the graphics cores has been switched off (or had to be switched off due to rejects). However, the iPad mini 7 naturally beats the performance of the previous model from 2021, the iPad mini 6 with A15 Bionic. It also only had 5 GPU cores and only 4 GB of memory. The Geekbench score for single-core was 2121, the multi-core score was 5367 (CPU in each case) and the Metal GPU score was only 19486.
It remains to be seen how the binning will affect gaming performance. The iPad mini must feed a different resolution than the iPhones – even if they are not far apart. 1179 by 2556 pixels at 461 dpi. The iPad mini has 2266 by 1488 pixels at 326 dpi, the iPhone 15 Pro. The AI benchmarks should also be interesting.
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