The newly released build of popular benchmarking tool Geekbench shows that Apple’s A6 processor, used in the new iPhone 5, is clocked at around 1.3GHz, not the 1.02GHz originally reported.
When the sixth-generation iPhone was released last week, reviews noted a substantial boost in processing speed compared to last year’s iPhone 4S, mostly due to Apple’s new A6 SoC. At the time, the chip was thought to be clocked at around 1GHz, however a new benchmark using Primate Labs’ Geekbench for iPhone shows a consistent clock speed of 1.3GHz.
Primate Labs John Poole says that the latest version, 2.3.6, released on Wednesday, provides a more accurate reporting of the CPU speed as a result of an improved processor frequency detection algorithm.
“Earlier versions of Geekbench had trouble determining the A6’s frequency, which lead to people claiming the A6’s frequency as 1.0GHz as it was the most common value Geekbench reported,” Poole said.
Initial reports found on Geekbench’s online device log showed the handsets CPU to be twice as fast as the previous A5 series, despite being clocked at 1.02GHz. The clock speed led to speculation about how Apple managed to obtain the dramatic performance improvements. Theories ranged from new memory handling methods to a totally redesigned core.
Some publications have reported that the A6 has the ability to dynamically overclock itself during CPU-intensive operations, but Poole disagrees, “In our testing, we found the 1.3GHz was constant regardless of whether one core or both cores were busy.”
