A recent series of benchmark tests seem to indicate that Apple’s A6 SoC powering the iPhone 5 is clocked at approximately 1.3GHz, rather than the 1.02GHz reported earlier this week.
Indeed, Primate Labs’ John Poole told Engadget that the latest version of Geekbench (2.3.6) offers significantly more accurate CPU reporting due to 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 explained.
He also noted that the A6 was probably not designed to dynamically overclock itself during CPU-intensive situations, as some publications previously claimed.
“I don’t believe the A6 has any form of processor boost,” Poole said. “In our testing, we found the 1.3GHz was constant regardless of whether one core or both cores were busy.”
To confirm Poole’s results, the AppleInsider crew tested an AT&T version of the iPhone 5 with Geekbench 2.3.6. Interestingly, the first run clocked the A6 at 1.10GHz, though after killing and reopening the app, the software reported a consistent clock speed of 1.29GHz.
“The A6’s dual-cores were in fact designed in-house by Apple and feature a ‘manual’ layout that is said to be faster than computer-constructed counterparts,” added AppleInsider’s Mikey Campbell.
