iPhone 3GS OpenGL Power

If the iPhone was good for the lat couple of years, no one doubts the extra speed of the new 3GS to make it even better.

Besides raw CPU power, the new 3GS has an improved 3D graphic accelerator: a Power VR SGX instead of the previous MBX.

Now, for the first time, someone got a OpenGL benchmark program running on the iPhones and get some numbers about just how much faster the new 3GS is.
The results are simply astonishing: the new iPhone 3GS blows the competition away - even when compared to the previous references, the "old" iPhone 3G and the Nokia 95.

Some developers have already found that in their tests, with the new 3GS being about 4x faster in OpenGL.

[Click here to watch the video]

In another case, Firemint (creators of the fabulous Real Racing game) tried to push the 3GS to the limit using their game engine.

Real Racing has up to six cars on the track at any one time. Since the game uses a high fidelity physics engine, adding cars is a good test for pushing the hardware. We started our tech demo with 8 cars on the track, then 10, 12, 16 and 20, and the 3GS still didn't break a sweat. We finally stopped when we got to 40 cars on the track at the same time, still with no perceptible drop in frame rate. We think the results are mind blowing.

I couldn't agree more; just see it for yourself:



If you thought the iPhone 3G has capable of some pretty incredible 3D things, what can you expect for the new games that will undoubtedly come for the 3GS?
No wonder John Carmack himself is interested in taking it for a spin (auto-translated link, sorry.)