Apple's A15 Chip Faster Than Company's Own Claims in Independent Tests

Apple's new iPhone 13 series features its latest A15 Bionic processor, which the company says is 50% faster than the competition. That vague claim was the entry point for AnandTech's investigation into the chip's performance, efficiency, and graphics core improvements, and the review's conclusions easily back it up.

a15 chip

Compared to the competition, the A15 isn't +50 faster as Apple claims, but rather +62% faster. While Apple's larger cores are more power hungry, they're still a lot more energy efficient.

Two new CPU microarchitectures feature in the A15, both for the two performance cores and the four efficiency cores, which are likely made on a 5nm+ process, which TSMC refers to as N5P, a "performance-enhanced version" of its 5nm process that allows for higher maximum frequencies.

On top of this, AnandTech notes that the A15 system cache has been boosted to 32MB, which is double the system cache compared to the A14. This doubling "dwarfs the competition" and is a "key factor in the power efficiency of the chip, being able to keep memory accesses on the same silicon rather than going out to slower, and more power inefficient DRAM," says the report.

Apple has also overseen a 50% growth in the level 2 cache of the A15's performance cores, up from 8MB to 12MB, which AnandTech calls "humungous," as it's now the same L2 size as Apple's M1 chip, and over double compared to other designs like the Snapdragon 888. These cache boosts help the A15 to eke out "impressive" gains from a performance core microarchitecture that doesn't differ much from last year's A14, while an additional integer ALU and faster memory subsystem in the efficiency cores only adds to the performance improvements.

Apple A15 performance cores are extremely impressive – usually increases in performance always come with some sort of deficit in efficiency, or at least flat efficiency. Apple here instead has managed to reduce power whilst increasing performance, meaning energy efficiency is improved by 17% on the peak performance states versus the A14.

As for the new A15 GPU, AnandTech calls it "absolutely astonishing," as it showcases improvements that are well above Apple's marketing claims. The only real criticism in the review is the amount of throttling on the ‌iPhone‌ 13 Pro, which AnandTech believes is down to the new PCB design.

Apple's overall ‌iPhone‌ thermal design is said to be "definitely amongst the worst out there, as it doesn't do a good job of spreading the heat throughout the body of the phone." However, even with their somewhat limited thermal capacity, the ‌iPhone‌ 13 models are "still vastly faster and give out a better gaming experience than competitive phones."

In sum, AnandTech says the A15 improvements are "substantial" and believes the efficiency improvements are "key" to the vastly longer battery life seen on the ‌iPhone‌ 13 series. "While the A15 isn't the brute force iteration we've become used to from Apple in recent years, it very much comes with substantial generational gains that allow it to be a notably better SoC than the A14."

Related Forum: iPhone

Popular Stories

Apple Watch Ultra Night Mode Screen

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Launching Later This Year With Two Key Upgrades

Wednesday July 2, 2025 1:13 pm PDT by
The long wait for an Apple Watch Ultra 3 appears to be nearly over, and it is rumored to feature both satellite connectivity and 5G support. Apple Watch Ultra's existing Night Mode In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is on track to launch this year with "significant" new features, including satellite connectivity, which would let you...
iPhone 17 Pro in Hand Feature Lowgo

iPhone 17 Pro Coming Soon With These 14 New Features

Friday July 4, 2025 1:05 pm PDT by
Apple's next-generation iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are just over two months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models. Latest Rumors These rumors surfaced in June and July:Apple logo repositioned: Apple's logo may have a lower position on the back of the iPhone 17 Pro models, compared to previous...
iPhone 17 Pro in Hand Feature Lowgo

iPhone 17 Pro Max Battery Capacity Leaked

Thursday July 3, 2025 5:40 am PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro Max will feature the biggest ever battery in an iPhone, according to the Weibo leaker known as "Instant Digital." In a new post, the leaker listed the battery capacities of the iPhone 11 Pro Max through to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and added that the iPhone 17 Pro Max will feature a battery capacity of 5,000mAh: iPhone 11 Pro Max: 3,969mAh iPhone 12 Pro Max: 3,687mAh...
airpods pro 2

AirPods Pro 3 to Help Maintain Apple's Place in Earbud Market Amid Increasing Low-Cost Competition

Thursday July 3, 2025 7:25 am PDT by
Apple's position as the dominant force in the global true wireless stereo (TWS) earbud market is expected to continue through 2025, according to Counterpoint Research. The forecast outlines a 3% year-over-year increase in global TWS unit shipments for 2025, signaling a transition from rapid growth to a more mature phase for the category. While Apple is set to remain the leading brand by...
apple silicon mac lineup 2024 feature purple m5

Apple's Upcoming Macs Listed in New Report

Thursday July 3, 2025 9:09 am PDT by
AppleInsider's Marko Zivkovic today shared a list of alleged identifiers for future Mac models, which should roll out over the next year or so. The report does not reveal anything too surprising, but it does serve as further evidence that Apple is seemingly working on new models of every Mac, including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro. Apple is...
iPhone 17 Pro Lower Logo Magsafe

iPhone 17 Pro's New MagSafe Design Revealed in Leaked Photo

Wednesday July 2, 2025 8:37 am PDT by
The upcoming iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are rumored to have a slightly different MagSafe magnet layout compared to existing iPhone models, and a leaked photo has offered a closer look at the supposed new design. The leaker Majin Bu today shared a photo of alleged MagSafe magnet arrays for third-party iPhone 17 Pro cases. On existing iPhone models with MagSafe, the magnets form a...

Top Rated Comments

Michael Scrip Avatar
49 months ago
"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."

- Alan Kay

Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)
leman Avatar
49 months ago
Just some fun facts:

* The iPhone CPU now has more cache than the state-of-the art desktop CPUs that cost almost as much as the entire iPhone itself
* [S]Just the four efficiency cores in the iPhone are about as fast as the 2019 13" MacBook Pro[/S]
* The iPhone GPU is faster than the Iris Plus in the $1799 four-port 13" MBP

Yep, Apple is clearly unable to innovate and is entirely doomed...

Edit: it was pointed out that my second claim is not correct. So I retract it, no, the E-cores on the iPhone are not as fast as the 13" MBP. However, if you add P-cores into the mix, A15 is faster than any 13" x86 MacBook Pro that was every built (similar total multi-core performance as the highest-tier BTO Ice Lake CPU, significantly faster in single-core).
Score: 34 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Serban55 Avatar
49 months ago


He is the reason Intel was on top of the game over a decade, and he is the reason Apple it is where it is, a King in silicone
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
_Spinn_ Avatar
49 months ago
Very impressive gains in performance. Apple seems to deliver every year.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Joe_ Avatar
49 months ago
This article is one of the reasons why I’ll continue to use Apple products for the foreseeable future.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Joe_ Avatar
49 months ago



He is the reason Intel was on top of the game over a decade, and he is the reason Apple it is where it is, a King in silicone
He is truly underrated. I can’t wait to see what M1X can do for the pro-sumer Macs.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)