Hubert Nguyen for Ubergizmo:
Because Apple has used the term Quad-Core in an unusual context (graphics unit), it leaves a lot of users confused about what Quad-Core means. Coincidentally, this was exactly what Apple needed, from a PR/Marketing standpoint. To make a long story short: the Apple A5X is NOT a quad-core processor, but let’s take a closer look…
Nguyen explains that the A5X chip inside the new iPad uses a graphics core that can operate twice as fast as the previous-generation model thanks to the addition of more graphics processing units.
Apple’s claim that the A5X is faster than Nvidia’s new (truly) quad-core Tegra 3 raised eyebrows, and Nguyen is skeptical that it does outperform Nvidia’s hardware in graphics performance measurements other than fill rate. Apple certainly needed to do something to speed up the iPad’s graphics since the new screen is pushing so many more pixels than before.
Keep in mind Apple utilizes OpenCL, probably to a significant degree, to speed up many processes. That likely adds quite a bit to the performance even though the CPU is dual-core.
As long as it doesn’t feel slower than the iPad 2 I’m fine with it. Even if android tablets were 2x faster it wouldn’t matter …my apps are on iOS. It would have to be 3-4x slower than an android tablet before I’d think twice about ditching iOS. (I’d still rather own a 3GS iPhone than any android phone, for example)
Here’s an AnandTech benchmark comparison between the Apple’s A5 vs NVidia’s Tegra 3 GPUs:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5163/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-nvidia-tegra-3-review/3
Results show the A5 performing 1.2-2X better than the Tegra 3 in graphics (under Honeycomb). With that data, it’s possible the A5X would perform better than both the A5 and Tegra 3.