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The Apple A17 Pro chipset inside the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max turned several heads due to its capacity for running console-exclusive games. In fact, its solid performance in gaming helped Apple make a lot of sales from both smartphones. But how powerful is it, and is it better than the previous A16 Bionic?
Yes, the Apple A17 Pro is the most powerful processor. In this article, we will take a look at just how powerful it is and how it compares to the previous A16 Bionic chipset.
Note: This article is subjective and solely reflects the writer's opinions.
Apple A16 Bionic vs A17 Pro: Which is the most powerful processor?
The Apple A17 Pro shocked the mobile market and surprised people when it was first released, showing off running console-level games at the launch event. It was expected of Apple to make the new A17 Pro faster than the A16 Bionic. What remains to be seen is whether it is fast enough to run console-level games like Resident Evil: Village and Assassin's Creed Mirage, among others.
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Firstly, let us look at the specs for both chipsets and see how they compare.
Specs comparison
Here are the specs of Apple A16 Bionic vs A17 Pro:
While the specs of the two CPUs are almost the same, there are a couple of differences. The A17 Pro CPU is clocked much higher at 3.78 GHz, and that's the highest clock speed we have seen on a mobile processor till now. Moreover, the A17 Pro has 20% more GPU shader cores, which leads to around 20% more GPU than the A16 Bionic as you would expect.
It is also built on a 3nm manufacturing process, so it should result in higher performance and lower power consumption.
CPU performance comparison
Since the A17 Pro has a higher CPU clock speed, it has a higher performance score as well. Here are some benchmarks of the two chipsets.
In single-core scores, the Apple A17 Pro is 13 - 16% ahead of the A16 Bionic. In multi-core scores, the A17 Pro scores 7 to 18% higher, depending on the test. So, the newest Apple chipset managed to get an average 15% higher average CPU score, which is quite decent.
GPU performance comparison
Apple showed off the Apple A17 Pro's GPU power by running a demo of Resident Evil Village on it. Officially, this makes the Apple A17 Pro the only chipset that can run this game on a smartphone as of now. The A16 Bionic cannot run this game either, although it can run other mobile games just fine. It should be kept in mind that the console games might be locked to the former chipset to make the newer chipset more valuable.
However, having support for console games is not indicative of GPU performance. So, we ran a few benchmarks on the two chipsets to determine the performance difference between the GPUs of both chipsets.
Interestingly, the Apple A17 Pro got around 17% higher performance on one benchmark, but only 1% on another, which was abnormal. It probably got a lower score because the iPhone was thermal throttled during the 3DMark Wild Life benchmark. A YouTuber channel by the name of Consumertechwarehouse also confirmed the same by testing it.
He did an ice bucket challenge, where one iPhone 15 Pro Max was kept in an ice bucket and the other was kept normally. The iPhone in the ice bucket scored 24% higher on the 3DMark Solar Bay test than the other. So, the new iPhone is indeed better in gaming, but its performance could be gimped by thermal throttling in some games. So, keep that in mind while choosing between the two chipsets.
Moreover, Resident Evil: Village didn't run very well on the chipset. It gave around 30FPS with MetalFX upscaling enabled, but the performance wasn't a constant 30FPS, dipping down now and then. It could be due to the thermal throttling, lower RAM capacity, or the game may not be fully optimized yet.
Ray tracing and other graphical features support
This is another area where the Apple A17 Pro wins. It supports ray tracing and mesh shading, which the Apple A16 Bionic doesn't. Although games with ray tracing support are yet to be released for the iPhone 15 Pro series, there's a good chance it will in the future.
Verdict
The Apple A17 Pro is the most powerful processor in terms of both CPU and GPU performance. In CPU, it is 15% faster than the A16 bionic on average, but the same cannot be said on the GPU front. While the GPU in the Apple A17 Pro is faster than the A16 bionic by 17%, this performance advantage can be diminished by thermal throttling. It was evident from the 3DMark Wild Life test.
