PowerVR SGX543MP2 vs PowerVR SGX530 vs PowerVR SGX545

PowerVR SGX543MP2

The PowerVR SGX543MP2 (series 5XT) is an integrated graphics card for ARM based SoCs. It is e.g. used in the Apple A5 (iPhone 4s and iPad 2) and offers 8 unified shader cores that support OpenGL ES 2.0.

PowerVR SGX530

The PowerVR SGX530 is an integrated graphics card that can be found in mostly ARM based SoCs for tablets and smartphones. It offers 2 pixel and 1 vertex shaders that are usually clocked at 200 MHz. The GPU supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and was announced in July of 2005.

PowerVR SGX545

The PowerVR SGX545 is an integrated graphics card in some of the Intel Atom Clover Trail SoCs (for example, the Atom Z2760). Technically, the SGX545 and the GMA 3650 of the Atom N28xx models are identical. The GPU would be theoretically capable of DirectX 10.1, but Intel's implementation officially supports only Direct3D 9_3.

In the case of the Atom Z2760, the SGX545 is clocked at 533 MHz. The performance is far behind AMD's Bobcat and Kabini/Temash APUs and even worse than many ARM SoCs such as Nvidia's Tegra 3. The GPU is therefore unsuitable for 3D gaming. 1080p videos, however, will play fluently.

Corresponding to the poor performance of the GPU, the power consumption is also very low. This allows the Z2760/SGX545 to be used in passively cooled tablets.