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So, the Air is using 30% more RAM on the same 1GB as the previous gen, as we suspected since it's 64 bit and 64 bit pointers bloat things. A lot of disgruntled iPad 1 owners will tell you lack of RAM is it's achilles heel, wonder if this will hurt it. The old 1GB devices already had Safari kicking tabs out of memory way too fast, now it's 30% RAM heavier. The iPhone 4 works way better than the OG iPad even though it's slower, because it has more RAM.
Even if there's some Mavericks like compression, Anand measured how much RAM was in use under load. If it was compressing something, it would have been factored into how much was used.

Also had no idea the iPhone 5S throttles down to just 75% of it's normal clock speed after just two minutes of load before this review, no one brought it up in actual 5S reviews.
That's why I like Anandtech so much.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7460/appl ... air-review

*all versions* 64 bit anything take up 25+% more ram. glad the apple fans get to join reality...

maxxcool wrote:

*all versions* 64 bit anything take up 25+% more ram. glad the apple fans get to join reality...

Too bad Android fans have yet to join reality.

On the same page of the review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/3

You can see the 5s throttles back its CPU frequency to about 1GHz after the 2 minute mark. The crazy thing is that until that point the 5s manages to run at full frequency without so much as a hiccup for two full minutes, running an incredibly power hungry task. Given that most iOS apps aren’t this power intensive for such a sustained period of time, iPhone 5s users should almost always see the A7 running at a full 1.3GHz. Pretty crazy.

Further down the same page he wanted to see the max power draw he could get (perhaps running the same test as the CPU throttle test) and found the max draw was close to 11.5 W, but running T-Rex offscreen drew ~6W, and Infinity Blade 3 on the iPad Air drew less than 5W. In other words, the CPU throttle test doesn't replicate real-world usage.

Edit: Added link to review page.

yeah that's brutal. As expensive as the 5s and iPad Air/Retina Mini are, you'd think they could spare the $5 to give them 2GB of RAM. And then who cares? it has twice the RAM.

End User wrote:

maxxcool wrote:

*all versions* 64 bit anything take up 25+% more ram. glad the apple fans get to join reality...

Too bad Android fans have yet to join reality.

To be fair, there are already Android phones with 3GB of RAM. My phone has 2GB and rarely users over half. I don't play games or anything really though.

The same concept applies though. You use an iPad 1, or whatever Android phone/tablet from ~3-4 years back, chances are it's gonna get slow. Get a new device, yo.

DancinJack wrote:

End User wrote:

maxxcool wrote:

*all versions* 64 bit anything take up 25+% more ram. glad the apple fans get to join reality...

Too bad Android fans have yet to join reality.

To be fair, there are already Android phones with 3GB of RAM.

To be fair, that is irrelevant.

End User wrote:

To be fair, that is irrelevant.

Not really. It's a trend that won't stop with the current generation of devices.

It's funny how people read Anand's review and picked those two points to harp on - of course 64bit software has a larger RAM footprint and of course the iPhone 5S throttles its SoC under sustained load - many smartphones do considering their low thermal headroom. The Nexus 4 (which I have) was notorious for overheating and down-clocking its SoC, and putting it in a freezer for a benchmark run would sometimes get me a 15% boost.

Anyone want to talk about how the A7 is such a beast that Apple managed to leapfrog every other ARM vendor in one shot? Or how Apple managed to increase battery life over the iPad 4 while reducing battery capacity massively to accommodate the much thinner form factor?

DancinJack wrote:

Not really. It's a trend that won't stop with the current generation of devices.

I think End User was making a point about how 64bit applications are a long ways off on Android, not the RAM devices ship with.

I wonder how the former CMO of Qualcomm would feel about this...

I think some of the Apple Fanboys are missing what I think Anand, an admitted Apple fan, was trying to point out: It needs more RAM. With my iPad 2 I find it, too, kicks out applications out of memory very quickly. Having to repoen a game just because I check an email is rather annoying. And that is going to happen more often on the iPad Air. DerFunk is right, they should have spent the extra $$ on more RAM, even if it would have had an impact on power usage.

I thought the 64-bit was just going to be a marketing gimick. But it turns out that there are decent gains in the 64-bit applications on iOS. I'll also agree with Beelzebubba9, the latest Apple chips is pretty amazing. It's a larger upgrade than I was expecting in performance. Kudos to Apple on that.

End User wrote:

maxxcool wrote:

*all versions* 64 bit anything take up 25+% more ram. glad the apple fans get to join reality...

Too bad Android fans have yet to join reality.

since my phone has only 3gb or ram... I don't need 64bit. there, solved that for you...

Beelzebubba9 wrote:

It's funny how people read Anand's review and picked those two points to harp on - of course 64bit software has a larger RAM footprint and of course the iPhone 5S throttles its SoC under sustained load - many smartphones do considering their low thermal headroom. The Nexus 4 (which I have) was notorious for overheating and down-clocking its SoC, and putting it in a freezer for a benchmark run would sometimes get me a 15% boost.

Anyone want to talk about how the A7 is such a beast that Apple managed to leapfrog every other ARM vendor in one shot? Or how Apple managed to increase battery life over the iPad 4 while reducing battery capacity massively to accommodate the much thinner form factor?

I $%^&ing hate apple.. i wish they would die in a fire... get attacked by sex crazied squirrels while tumbling in a giant drier filled with broken glass and their own fetid feces.

but they *do* make a great OS and a great user experience. period. I just hate the iphone, and the closed platform and their mindset.

Beelzebubba9 wrote:

It's funny how people read Anand's review and picked those two points to harp on - of course 64bit software has a larger RAM footprint and of course the iPhone 5S throttles its SoC under sustained load - many smartphones do considering their low thermal headroom. The Nexus 4 (which I have) was notorious for overheating and down-clocking its SoC, and putting it in a freezer for a benchmark run would sometimes get me a 15% boost.

Anyone want to talk about how the A7 is such a beast that Apple managed to leapfrog every other ARM vendor in one shot? Or how Apple managed to increase battery life over the iPad 4 while reducing battery capacity massively to accommodate the much thinner form factor?

For the last part, I most certainly did praise the A7 when it came out. It's an amazing chip for now. It doesn't however make the rest of the product completely immune to criticism.

As for the bolded, that's exactly my point, the Nexus 4 was harped on pretty badly for throttling, the iPhone 5S drops to 75% its max clock and no one mentions it.

maxxcool wrote:

I $%^&ing hate apple.. i wish they would die in a fire... get attacked by sex crazied squirrels while tumbling in a giant drier filled with broken glass and their own fetid feces.

Why? It always weirds me out when people have such strong feelings for a company because they've anthropomorphized the brand to such a degree their notions are no longer grounded in reality, but tied to a fabricated image they've invented. It's crazy talk.

If an iPhone stole your girl, then I take that all back of course.

tipoo wrote:

For the last part, I most certainly did praise the A7 when it came out. It's an amazing chip for now. It doesn't however make the rest of the product completely immune to criticism.

As for the bolded, that's exactly my point, the Nexus 4 was harped on pretty badly for throttling, the iPhone 5S drops to 75% its max clock and no one mentions it.

You make a good point. The issue with the Nexus 4 wasn't that it throttled its SoC, it was that it did so to such a degree it impacted the consistency of the device's performance. I haven't heard of any similar issues with the iPhone 5S. We all know now why most other Android devices currently sold don't throttle their SoC when running benchmarks.

Beelzebubba9 wrote:

maxxcool wrote:

I $%^&ing hate apple.. i wish they would die in a fire... get attacked by sex crazied squirrels while tumbling in a giant drier filled with broken glass and their own fetid feces.

Why? It always weirds me out when people have such strong feelings for a company because they've anthropomorphized the brand to such a degree their notions are no longer grounded in reality, but tied to a fabricated image they've invented. It's crazy talk.

If an iPhone stole your girl, then I take that all back of course.

Stole your girl lol... no, i just don't like them as a whole.

You might want to see a therapist, because you seem to hold something deeply personal for a company and a group of people you have no association with.

tipoo wrote:

A lot of disgruntled iPad 1 owners will tell you lack of RAM is it's achilles heel, wonder if this will hurt it.

I am an iPad "4" owner and I can tell you the same thing. All it takes is to play a single game (like Clash of Clans) and then leave it in "background" without manually unloading it - this immediately causes other "background" apps like Safari to "reload" all of the content.

JohnC wrote:

tipoo wrote:

A lot of disgruntled iPad 1 owners will tell you lack of RAM is it's achilles heel, wonder if this will hurt it.

I am an iPad "4" owner and I can tell you the same thing. All it takes is to play a single game (like Clash of Clans) and then leave it in "background" without manually unloading it - this immediately causes other "background" apps like Safari to "reload" all of the content.

Yup, even with nothing else running, if you just go back to dashboard for a second it will unload the game. If you are running other things too, it will push everything out of RAM.

People kept saying it wasn't a big deal at the iPad 1 launch, but a faster SoC didn't help it compared to the slower iPhone 4 which just had more RAM and was supported longer and felt much smoother.

Simply ask yourself.. why would Apple use a 64bit processor on system with 1GB.
Why would they incur a ~25% dram penalty knowingly.

If the only answer you come up with is "Apple is just stupid", try again.

sschaem wrote:

Simply ask yourself.. why would Apple use a 64bit processor on system with 1GB.
Why would they incur a ~25% dram penalty knowingly.

If the only answer you come up with is "Apple is just stupid", try again.

I know the real answer, and no, Apple is not stupid, at least not in this case. It's just statements like these:
http://www.apple.com/ipad-air/features/ still work very well for "impressing" simple-minded sheeple and making them automatically believe that "larger numbers are always better". Even though most of them are highly unlikely to ever NEED all these "big numbers", especially when reading the books, checking e-mail/twitter/Facebook, playing Angry Birds or even watching/streaming the low bitrate "HD" movies from content providers like Netflix/iTunes/Amazon

The reason Apple won't pony up the extra $5 for another gig of RAM isn't because they are stupid; it is because they will sell 40 to 50 million iDevices a quarter, and that $5 dollars could easily add up to a billion a year in Apple's pockets. As far as I can tell, the average iPhone & iPad users barely does any sort of multitasking; you would be surprised at the number of people who don't get the point of tabbed browsing, for instance (not just on the iPad/iPhone, but on other tablets, phones, and PCs). So the extra RAM wouldn't improve the user experience for a large chunk of Apple's customers, thus Apple would rather have the extra money to build their spaceship.

DreadCthulhu wrote:

The reason Apple won't pony up the extra $5 for another gig of RAM isn't because they are stupid; it is because they will sell 40 to 50 million iDevices a quarter, and that $5 dollars could easily add up to a billion a year in Apple's pockets. As far as I can tell, the average iPhone & iPad users barely does any sort of multitasking; you would be surprised at the number of people who don't get the point of tabbed browsing, for instance (not just on the iPad/iPhone, but on other tablets, phones, and PCs). So the extra RAM wouldn't improve the user experience for a large chunk of Apple's customers, thus Apple would rather have the extra money to build their spaceship.

^^ this. it is very smart on their part. most people do not actively multitask, aka switch app, do something, 15 seconds later switch app do something else, switch back, launch a new app and to 3 things in the span of 5 minutes going back to a archived app every minute. And if they are it's limited like for navigation to the middle of a lake then searching for swim lessons oh the way to a out of office meeting.

tipoo wrote:

Yup, even with nothing else running, if you just go back to dashboard for a second it will unload the game. If you are running other things too, it will push everything out of RAM.

Yeah, that behavior always annoyed me with my iPad 3. It's not a deal breaker, but I'd really appreciate an extra 1GB of RAM and a less aggressive culling algorithm sometimes. I know I multi-task more than 90% of most iPad users, but still. I'd gladly pay extra for a bit more oomph.

sschaem wrote:

Simply ask yourself.. why would Apple use a 64bit processor on system with 1GB.
Why would they incur a ~25% dram penalty knowingly.

The real answer is there can be big performance improvements by moving to the ARM v8 instruction set, not to mention the ~!64BITS!~ marketing angle as well as future proofing the platform.

...but you knew that anyway....

maxxcool wrote:

^^ this. it is very smart on their part. most people do not actively multitask, aka switch app, do something, 15 seconds later switch app do something else, switch back, launch a new app and to 3 things in the span of 5 minutes going back to a archived app every minute. And if they are it's limited like for navigation to the middle of a lake then searching for swim lessons oh the way to a out of office meeting.

Just because people hit the home button to go to the home screen and then open another app doesn't mean their phone isn't multitasking. In fact, I'd say most people multitask and don't even know it (as much as iOS allows, anyway, with its sort-of multitasking via services).

Food for thought. the A7 run 32bit app natively... The A7 is a multipackage chip and include the dram...

64bit is more then pointer size, and apple took the opportunity to tweak the overall architecture.

http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa ... d-you.html

And of course, the title of this thread is incorrect. "64bit app, on 64bit ios, take ~25% more ram but run faster and more efficiently"

sschaem wrote:

Food for thought. the A7 run 32bit app naively... The A7 is a multipackage chip and include the dram...

64bit is more then pointer size, and apple took the opportunity to tweak the overall architecture.

http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa ... d-you.html

And of course, the title of this thread is incorrect. "64bit app, on 64bit ios, take ~25% more ram but run faster and more efficiently"

Cool article.