Benchmark tests show that Apple's A5X does significantly outperform Nvidia's Tegra 3

During the launch event for the new iPad, Apple's SVP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller claimed that the tablet's A5X processor packs four times the graphical punch of Nvidia's Tegra 3 chip.

Not content to take Apple's word for it, the folks over at Laptop Mag ran a few benchmark tests of their own.

Apple's A5X left the Tegra 3 in the dust when it came to Open GL 3D performance, processing over double the number of frames at more than twice the speed of Nvidia's GPU, and rendering over four times as many texture pixels (texels).

However, when it came to crunching numbers, Apple's A5X couldn't keep up with the Tegra 3's superior integer and floating point stats. This resulted in a 692 Geekbench score for the new iPad, while the Nvidia-powered Transformer Prime scored a cool 1571.

The new iPad saved a little face by scoring slightly more than its competitor in the SunSpider browser performance test, but it was impossible to determine whether this was down to processing power or the fact that Safari just performs better on this test than the Android 4.0 browser.

To finish off the comparison, the new iPad and the Transformer Prime were put through their paces with two graphically intense games: Riptide GP and Shadowgun.

The new iPad's Retina display shone through in this test, producing sharper images and bolder colours than the Nvidia-powered tablet.

The tester did notice, however, that the Transformer Prime boasted a few extra visual elements, including more reflections and splash effects in Riptide GP; and a pair of wind-buffeted flags in Shadowland.

Still, Nvidia did point out that these aesthetic improvements could be a result of the optimisation both games received for the Tegra 3, so there's nothing to say that the new iPad couldn't replicate the effects were the games to be updated on the App Store.