Underwriter’s Laboratories has just released a new 3DMark Wild Life benchmark, and we couldn’t be happier. There’s a distinct lack of reliable graphics benchmarks on iOS/iPadOS.
Sure, you can find lots of “GPU” performance measurement tools for iPhones and iPads, but the vast majority of them measure GPU compute performance rather than the actual display of 3D graphics. It puts a totally different kind of stress on the GPU and memory subsystem of your device.
Thus, we’ve been trying to stick with 3DMark’s prior benchmarks—Sling Shot and Ice Storm—when measuring the performance of iPhones and iPads. Neither one of those have been updated since 2016, and they have stability problems on modern devices. What’s more, they use outdated graphics engines and rendering techniques, and don’t represent the state of the art in realtime 3D graphics and games.
