A week ago, Apple’s latest 4K Apple TV went on sale, using the new A15 Bionic chip. Foreign technology media FlatpanelsHD conducted a thorough test on it and compared it with Sony PlayStation 4/5 game consoles.
Apple TV 4K performance test
The A15 chip used in Apple TV 4K this year has 4 GPU cores, while the chip used in the iPhone 13 Pro series has 5 GPU cores. Even in terms of CPU cores, Apple TV uses 4 CPU cores, while iPhone has 5 CPU cores.
Tests conducted by FlatpanelsHD show that this year’s Apple TV 4K is “about 40% faster” than the previous generation Apple TV with the A12 chip inside. Apple claims it should be 50% faster, but the difference can simply be attributed to a difference in testing methodology.
Another change this year is that the new Apple TV 4K has no internal fans, resulting in a smaller and lighter design. How does this affect performance, cooling and throttling? The new Apple TV 4K actually slows down less than previous models.
In CPU benchmarks, the A15 is about 40% faster than the A12 in previous Apple TVs, less than the 50% improvement Apple claims. The reason for this is twofold: on the one hand it may have used a different test method, and on the other hand we were surprised to see that the A15 is less throttled than the A12 given that the A15 is not actively cooled.
The 20-minute CPU stress test limited the A12 to 65%, while the A15 was limited to only 84%, which means that the new Apple TV 4K can maintain the majority of CPU performance during long hours of intense play.
Performance comparison with PS5 and Xbox One
CPU aspect
The CPU of the A15 Bionic is much faster than previous generation consoles such as Xbox One and PlayStation 5. The CPU performance core of the A15 is also significantly faster than the CPU core of the PS5 (single-core performance), but the PS5 drives core performance in multi-core because it has 8 cores.
GPU appearance
As for the GPU, the Apple TV 4K (2022) spec has over 1 TFlop of graphics performance, but it’s somewhat vague as there’s no GPU info or benchmark app for tvOS. It still can’t match previous generation consoles like the Xbox One in TFlops performance and has half the RAM (4GB vs 8GB).
Image via FlatpanelsHD
storage medium
The Apple TV 4K (2022), on the other hand, has faster RAM and is equipped with a very fast NVMe SSD, unlike the older hard drives of previous generation consoles. In theory, both Xbox One and PS4 games should be playable on Apple TV without too many sacrifices in terms of quality or frame rates.
Apple has been trying to turn the Apple TV into a gaming device for years, with limited success. These performance tests point out that the problem isn’t performance, but the lack of broader support from game developers and studios. These tests show little change in that department, but performance in available games continues to impress.
