How did Apple get the GPU count of the new iPad Air wrong?
Yesterday, we reported that the M2 chip in Apple’s new iPad Air has 9 GPU cores and not 10 as advertised.
This discrepancy explains why the new iPad Air’s graphics performance was slightly lower than the last-generation iPad Pro, even though the two are supposedly powered by the same M2 chip.
Apple has now confirmed that the M2 chip in the iPad Air has 9 GPU cores but also said that all performance claims remain accurate despite this mix-up.
An Apple spokesperson said:
We are updating Apple.com to correct the core count for the M2 iPad Air. All performance claims for the M2 iPad Air are accurate and based on a 9-core GPU.
Earlier, the change was only reflected on Apple’s US site. But at the time of writing, the Singapore site has been updated too to say that the new iPad Air has 9 GPU cores.
The tech specs page of Apple Singapore's website has been updated.
Apple claims that despite the mix-up, its performance claims remain accurate. To recap, Apple says the new iPad Air is up to 50% faster than its predecessor and that it delivers 15% faster CPU performance and 25% better GPU performance.
To recap, here are some of the results of our testing.
Benchmark | iPad Air (M2) | iPad Air (M1) | Percentage difference |
Geekbench 6
(single) | 2,596 | 2,369 | +9.5% |
Geekbench 6
(multi-core) | 10,014 | 8,328 | +20.2% |
3DMark
(Wild Life Unlimited) | 23,634 | 18,275 | +29.3% |
3DMark
(Solar Bay) | 7,726 | 6,417 | +20.3% |
Geekbench Compute | 42,138 | 32,917 | +28.0% |
GFXBench
(Aztec 1440p) | 92.78 | 78.86 | +17.65% |
Thankfully, our tests show that Apple's performance claims remain mostly spot on. Sadly, Apple did not say much else about this mix-up. I'm curious how they could make such a mistake regarding the M2 chip's GPU core count.
Source: 9to5 Mac
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