iPhone 14 Pro beats Steam Deck in Basemark's new GPU benchmark

Daniel Sims

Posts: 1,333   +43
Staff
Why it matters: Several popular programs help users and businesses benchmark various devices on different operating systems. However, seeing one benchmark make direct comparisons across hardware, OSs, and vastly different product tiers is rare. Basemark's latest test promises to do just that, with intriguing results in certain areas.

Basemark claims its latest graphics benchmarking software — GPUScore: Sacred Path — is the first to offer cross-platform comparisons. It lets users and businesses directly compare the horsepower of Windows systems, Android devices, iPhones, and more.

Typically, benchmark systems only compare PCs, PC components, or mobile devices of the same type for obvious apples-to-apples lineups. Users tend to upload their results to websites like Geekbench, where others can compare them, while developers use them for optimization.

Basemark's two prior benchmarks fit this purpose – one only for PCs and one only for mobile devices. Sacred Path, instead, runs identical workloads on Windows (10 or 11), macOS (Monterey or later), Android (11 or newer), iOS (15 or newer), Ubuntu (20.04 LTS or later), and Linux Flatpak systems.

Hundreds of public Sacred Path results ranking computers, mobiles, and other devices are currently available on Powerboard 4.0. Predictably, high-end PCs with recent flagship graphics cards like the RTX 3090 occupy all the top spots, but the middle ranges are where things get interesting.

Average scores for the 5th generation iPad Pro and Apple's new in-house silicon appear next to PCs running mature mid-range graphics cards like the GTX 960 or 1050. Internal tests at Toms Hardware revealed perhaps the most surprising result, with the iPad 14 Pro (1837) edging out the Steam Deck (1828).

Of course, these tests don't hold the same weight as professional CPU and GPU benchmarks. Comparing wholly different systems introduces additional factors like overhead from operating systems and graphics APIs. Even a single game will differ between platforms depending on the developer's optimizations.

Tweaks players and developers make for Steam Deck performance are worlds apart from what iOS developers do to support multiple iPhone models. However, benchmarks like Sacred Path facilitate such internal optimizations for developers.

Sacred Path has a few modes to run the test under different conditions. Users can run the official benchmark at 1440p, each system's native screen resolution, or with Variable Rate Shading. Unofficial custom benchmarks let users tweak various settings or run a smooth "experience mode."

The technical features in Sacred Path include off-screen grid rendering for framerates beyond the GPU driver's limits, Physically Based Rendering in an HDR pipeline, Image-Based Lighting, Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion, Temporal Anti-Aliasing, volumetric lighting, and bone animations. The free version automatically uploads results to Powerboard 4.0, while the corporate version offers more configuration options and lets companies keep results private.

Those interested can download versions of GPUScore: Sacred Path for all platforms from Basemark or our mirror.

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So why apple won't pay cash to deliver more top AAA to their systems? I mean, I tried Alien Isolation on iPad, and though desktop and 34" beats that any day, it was cool to play AI maxed out with decent perfomance, definitely 30FPS and more, it would be major PR move nevertheless. Especially for iPads and 32" iMacs.
 
Well, what makes here the real difference is the superior gameplay experience which SteamDeck provides and this for the best price which Apple cannot. An Apple gamedeck for 500$? Never. Apple, in it's greediness, will rather go bankrupt than selling a gameplay experience as SteamDeck for 500$.
 
Well, what makes here the real difference is the superior gameplay experience which SteamDeck provides and this for the best price which Apple cannot. An Apple gamedeck for 500$? Never. Apple, in it's greediness, will rather go bankrupt than selling a gameplay experience as SteamDeck for 500$.

The fact your missing is that people who already own the phone now have something they can do some decent gaming on. Sure no one buys the phone for that reason but its a nice bonus to realize you have the capability to run some decent games at the tips of your fingers without having to buy another device.
 
The fact your missing is that people who already own the phone now have something they can do some decent gaming on. Sure no one buys the phone for that reason but its a nice bonus to realize you have the capability to run some decent games at the tips of your fingers without having to buy another device.
I am fully aware, also I am aware of Apple not giving the gameplay experience as I stated in my post. They are for milking money from their users, see Fortnite-Epic games episode.
 
Initial reaction is that even basic context tells me "so what"? Price points are different, and I can't say this benchmark says much about real-world gaming performance (what Steam Deck is focused on vs iPhone's general purpose)...
 
I'd be glad when Tim Apple finally retire.

It's clear that many great talents (were) at Apple wants to take the company much-much further in other endeavors but good ole, literally, Tim has deliberately held back Apple's major talents back (many great talents have already left Apple due to this prehistoric vision) full innovation prowess (and Tim only mostly care about the Apple TV+ BS, yup, the sign of AGING) on its next-gen risk of projects, keeping up with latest tech (like camera sensor tech, etc.), no 8K streaming and devices, no 4K iPhone/iPad panels... years later, Beats by Dre products are just washing away, on purpose for its sad AirPods line (Tim never had no real good intentions to utlize any of Dre's headphones, etc., it was just easier to buy-out your, and friends, biggest threat, you know), no lossless wireless headphones... still today (which is super weird because Apple is the author of its own lossless codex's'), none of its M-series line still don't support ray-tracing, etc., on and on!

He REALLY needs to pass the torch and retire already!
 
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The fact your missing is that people who already own the phone now have something they can do some decent gaming on. Sure no one buys the phone for that reason but its a nice bonus to realize you have the capability to run some decent games at the tips of your fingers without having to buy another device.
They can't because there are no good games for iOS or Android, at least no good games that would actually require more than 5 yo SOC to boot or run as an emulator.
Having an excellent SOC is one thing, but using it to play Facebook, making a fake bokeh effect on some photo or make it overheat like crazy after 2 minutes of full load are ...

If anything, it is an excellent case of totally wasted potential.
 
That's a joke... Can I install all my steam games on Apple device? will they play well? Can I install any other software I'd like to, or compile anything from github? Will this run Yuzu, rpcs3?
Sure, apple may have a good theoretical performance, but how is that relevant to a gamer?
I'm sure bejewelled or kingdom rush will play excellent, but for gaming I want a device which can handle the wide definition of gaming. And Apple definition of gaming is 'milk people more'.

Steam deck and steam OS are devices I own. They do not use walled garden approach because of any made up reasons - I won the device, I can install any OS I want, I can play any game I want. Valve is happy to sell us a cheap device and have no issues with us playing games from other vendors. And do not require us to use steam pay, and Valve is still doing money on that. Imagine how steam deck would work if Apple would make it... it would be a similar clusterf**k as their iOS.
 
I'd be glad when Tim Apple finally retire.

It's clear that many great talents (were) at Apple wants to take the company much-much further in other endeavors but good ole, literally, Tim has deliberately held back Apple's major talents back (many great talents have already left Apple due to this prehistoric vision) full innovation prowess (and Tim only mostly care about the Apple TV+ BS, yup, the sign of AGING) on its next-gen risk of projects, keeping up with latest tech (like camera sensor tech, etc.), no 8K streaming and devices, no 4K iPhone/iPad panels... years later, Beats by Dre products are just washing away, on purpose for its sad AirPods line (Tim never had no real good intentions to utlize any of Dre's headphones, etc., it was just easier to buy-out your, and friends, biggest threat, you know), no lossless wireless headphones... still today (which is super weird because Apple is the author of its own lossless codex's'), none of its M-series line still don't support ray-tracing, etc., on and on!

He REALLY needs to pass the torch and retire already!
Tim led apple to becoming the richest company on planet earth, and you're complaining about his lack of vision?

Just saying, money talks, and he's got a LOT.
 
Each of us in my family of 4 has an iPad pro 12. They get used FAR more than our PC's and games can look just as good. Definitely easier to play.

An iPad Pro 12 has a resolution of 2732 x 2048. Why in Gods name do we have to have $1000 GPU's in our desktops when an iPad Pro 12 Cellular costs as much as one GPU.

Sh@tty and unoptimized coding is the answer. Games could be coded to fit on a floppy disk when that was the media and all that they had. This unlimited storage and high RAM count has made coders extremely sloppy. Bloated crap.
 
Daniel,

You know what be the most fascinating article? One that looks at the coding of games and how unoptimized they've become.

It would be interesting to see a competition between coders to see how small in file size and RAM requirements they can make a game, without using work around like compression. Straight coding. ;)
 
Tim led apple to becoming the richest company on planet earth, and you're complaining about his lack of vision?

Just saying, money talks, and he's got a LOT.
Tim only stood in the shadows of a great man's innovation, for a decade, and benefited the rewards from that but he never reached much higher than those inevitable evolving yearly products due to just expected semi/annual refreshes because he extremely lacks innovation, hence, Apple's products are always last in leading new ideas.

Ford sold a bucket load of Escorts and they were extremely profitable from that line but what does that even mean for Ford today?
 
Tim only stood in the shadows of a great man's innovation, for a decade, and benefited the rewards from that but he never reached much higher than those inevitable evolving yearly products due to just expected semi/annual refreshes because he extremely lacks innovation, hence, Apple's products are always last in leading new ideas.
Bruh jobs has been dead for over a decade. At some point you have to move out of his shadow and admit other people can make good business decisions too.

Ford sold a bucket load of Escorts and they were extremely profitable from that line but what does that even mean for Ford today?
What even is this argument? Ford continues to be one of the top 5 automakers worldwide today.
 
Each of us in my family of 4 has an iPad pro 12. They get used FAR more than our PC's and games can look just as good. Definitely easier to play.

An iPad Pro 12 has a resolution of 2732 x 2048. Why in Gods name do we have to have $1000 GPU's in our desktops when an iPad Pro 12 Cellular costs as much as one GPU.

Sh@tty and unoptimized coding is the answer. Games could be coded to fit on a floppy disk when that was the media and all that they had. This unlimited storage and high RAM count has made coders extremely sloppy. Bloated crap.

And that iPad Pro has a performance of a years old GPU you can get for 50 bucks on ebay. Are there any games on iPad that would utilize 1000$ GPU? No. But on PC there are many. Or are there at least some iOS games that would require 500$ GPU that is inside PS5 or XB? Again, no. But on PC and consoles most of the games can put it to good use.

I agree that for many people a 1000$ or even a 500$ GPU is a waste, but each member of a family having an iPad Pro is quite a big waste too.
 
Tim led apple to becoming the richest company on planet earth, and you're complaining about his lack of vision?

Just saying, money talks, and he's got a LOT.
Apple sells devices to a lot of people just for status. Apple's marketing is a lot better than it's product development. Being a trillion dollar company doesn't mean they have product development vision. For example they brought out laptops with only one kind of port before Type C was popular that no one asked for, they brought out touchbar Macs no one asked for, they removed MagSafe which everyone liked, they brought out the "magic mouse" you can't use while charging and a bunch of other things customers didn't ask for and didn't like.
 
Apple as a gaming platform has been a joke since I got into computing in the early 1980s. That is why I choose DOS then Windows for my computing needs. And I don't see that ever-changing.
 
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