PowerVR SGX554MP4 vs PowerVR SGX545

PowerVR SGX554MP4

The PowerVR SGX554MP4 (series 5XT) is an integrated graphics card usually used in ARM based SoCs. It is e.g. used in the Apple A6X (iPad 4) SoC. It offers 4 graphics cores with 8 SIMDs each and is able to reach 76.8 GLOPs at 300 MHz. The GPU itself supports OpenGL ES 2.0, DirectX9 and OpenCL 1.1. In the Apple A6X the GPU cores are positioned near the two 64 Bit memory controllers leading to a very good memory bandwidth at the time.

Sources: iPad 4 review, Anandtech

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.