M1 Chip Found in the iPad Air 5 Features 8 GPU Cores
Though Apple did not announce this information during its ‘Peek Performance’ presentation, most of these details are usually found after the event has concluded. If potential buyers head over to the iPad Air 5’s ‘Tech Specs’ page and scroll down, they will notice that the M1 chip features an 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU. All products running this SoC came with 8 CPU cores as standard, but the number of GPU cores varied from product to product. For instance, the base M1 MacBook Air and M1 iMac shipped with a 7-core GPU instead of an 8-core part, and customers have to pay more to get that 8-core GPU variant. Fortunately, Apple decided not to bring that same approach to the iPad Air 5. Typically, using a lower-binned chip would make sense as the company has a better reason to bring down that price point, but it is excellent news for customers who want to experience maximum graphics performance from a tablet that will probably perform the same as the more premium iPad Pro models. It remains to be seen how future iPad Air 5 customers will benefit from a higher-binned M1 with 8 GPU cores, but it could have a positive effect when running GPU intensive tasks like video editing. We should also point out that though the iPad mini 6 features a higher-binned A15 Bionic, the CPU is running at a ‘lower than default’ clock speed. It is not confirmed if the iPad Air 5’s M1 CPU behaves in the same manner, but once we find out, we will surely provide updated information. Are you happy that Apple decided to use a faster M1 chip in a tablet that costs significantly less? Tell us down in the comments.
