iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max Benchmarks Reveal GPU Performance Improvements With New A17 Pro Chip

iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max benchmarks have revealed the improvements in GPU performance on both of Apple's flagship smartphones that were launched earlier this month. This year, Apple equipped both Pro models with an A17 Pro chip, while the regular models feature the A16 Bionic chip found on last year's iPhone 14 Pro. Apple says the 3nm A17 Pro chip is equipped with 6 GPU cores that are up to 20 percent faster than its predecessor, while offering improved efficiency.

MySmartPrice has published GFXBench benchmarks for three handsets in the iPhone 15 series of smartphones — the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and the iPhone 15 Plus. In some of the tests, it appears that the A17 Pro chip slightly exceeds Apple's claims of improved GPU performance made during its 'Wonderlust' launch event on September 12.

Compared to the iPhone 15 Plus with its A16 Bionic chip, the iPhone 15 Pro rendered a larger number of frames with the Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen test. The iPhone 15 Pro models rendered about 8 more frames per second than the iPhone 15 Plus during the benchmark test, as per the report. During the Normal Tier Offscreen test, the Pro model reportedly rendered 10 more frames per second than the iPhone 14 Pro that was launched last year.

Meanwhile, the Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen test showed that the A17 Pro chip offered around a 48fps improvement over the iPhone 15 Plus with the A16 Bionic chip. This amounts to an increase of nearly 31.5 percent over the previous generation chipset which means the GPU performance of the new iPhone 15 Pro models could be even higher than Apple's claims during its presentation.

Benchmarks are synthetic tests and only tell half of the story about a smartphone or computer's performance — there are several other factors that affect performance such as ambient temperature and software optimisation.

As per a previous report, the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are equipped with 8GB of RAM, marking the first time that Apple has increased the amount of RAM in its smartphones since the iPhone 13 Pro was launched in 2021. The company does not typically reveal the amount of RAM or the battery capacity of its smartphones, but these are usually revealed by benchmarks and teardowns of the handsets a few weeks after the devices make their debut.