With the announcement of the iPad 3, came the announcement of a new processor: the A5x chipset with (presumably) a dual-core CPU and quad-core GPU. The A5x is more powerful to be sure, but should we think of it as a next-generation chip or merely a spec bump?
Apple says that the A5x is twice as powerful as the A5 found in the iPad 2 and four times more powerful than NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chipset. Under what conditions they performed that test, remains to be seen, but shouldn’t come as a shock considering Apple’s A4 and A5 chipsets have routinely outperformed more powerful hardware from competitors.
AnandTech believes that the A5x is running the same dual-core Cortex A9 CPU as before, but now features a PowerVR SGX543MP4 GPU, instead of the the dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2.