A week ago, Apple’s latest 4K Apple TV went on sale, using the new A15 Bionic chip. Foreign tech media FlatpanelsHD conducted a detailed test on it and compared it with Sony PlayStation 4/5 game consoles.
Apple TV 4K Performance Test
The A15 chip used in this year’s Apple TV 4K has 4 GPU cores, while the chip used in the iPhone 13 Pro series has 5 GPU cores. Also in terms of CPU cores, Apple TV uses 4 CPU cores, while the iPhone has 5 CPU cores.
Tests conducted by FlatpanelsHD show that this year’s Apple TV 4K is “about 40 percent 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 excitement? The new Apple TV 4K actually triggers less than previous models.
In CPU benchmarks, the A15 is about 40 percent faster than the A12 in previous Apple TVs—less than the 50 percent improvement Apple claims. The reason for this is twofold: on the one hand it may have used a different testing method, and on the other hand we were surprised to see that the A15 was less throttled than the A12 given that the A15 is not being actively cooled.
The 20-minute CPU stress test limited the A12 to 65 percent, while the A15 was limited to just 84 percent, meaning the new Apple TV 4K can maintain most of its CPU performance in during long hours of heavy gaming.
Performance comparison with PS5 and Xbox One
CPU aspect
The CPU in the A15 Bionic is much faster than previous generation consoles such as the Xbox One and PlayStation 5. The CPU core of the A15 is also significantly faster than the CPU core of the PS5 (single core performance), but the PS5 is leading the core performance in multi-core because it has 8 cores.
GPU aspect
As for the GPU, Apple TV 4K (2022) specs have over 1 TFlops of graphics performance, but it’s a bit vague as there is no GPU information or benchmark app for tvOS. It still can’t match previous generation consoles like the Xbox One in terms of TFlops performance, and it has half the RAM (4GB vs. 8GB).
Photo via FlatpanelsHD
storage medium
On the other hand, the Apple TV 4K (2022) has faster RAM and has a very fast NVMe SSD, unlike the outdated hard drives in previous generation consoles. In theory, it should be possible to play Xbox One and PS4 games on the Apple TV without too much sacrifice in terms of quality or frame rate.
Apple has been trying to turn the Apple TV into a gaming device for years, with little success. These performance tests emphasize that the problem is not performance, but a lack of wider support from developers and game studios. These tests show little change in that department, but performance in the available games continues to impress.
