John Carmack: iPad 2 half as powerful as X360/PS3

As probably one of the most accomplished and candid game programmers, John Carmack recently made an interesting remark about the iPad 2 and the current generation of high-definition home consoles.

In an interview with Tom’s Hardware during QuakeCon 2011, the Doom Series creator commented that the iPad 2 “has about half the performance power [of the X360/PS3], and that’s a ballpark estimate.” The statement was a result of Carmack’s excitement for the advancing tablet hardware and how it is evolving so quickly.

“It’s just amazing,” said Carmack. “I love the way we’ve gone from the original iPhone up to the iPad 2 and the power that we’ve got there.”

iD Software is currently working on its graphic-intensive iD Tech 5 engine, which will power the upcoming first-person shooter Rage for the PC, PS3 and X360. Carmack revealed that a version of Rage will make it to the iPad 2 and is so far supposedly running great with less optimization effort than what was required for consoles.

The iPad 2 runs on the 1GHz A5 SoC with a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU and a dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. For comparison, the upcoming Playstation Vita will use a quad-core version of the PowerVR GPU found in the iPad 2. Exactly what the iPad 3 will bring to the table is uncertain, but there is no doubt that its graphics power will be inching closer to that of home consoles.

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