What is the difference between Apple A9 and Apple A12 Bionic? Should you buy phone having Apple A9 or should go for Apple A12 Bionic? Well, you'll get all your questions cleared here.Compare two chipset models on the basis of their benchmark score (AnTuTu and Geekbench), pros and cons, technical specs categorised into gaming, CPU, GPU, Multimedia, and Connectivity.
Apple A9 has a AnTuTu benchmark score of 171612 and Apple A12 Bionic has AnTuTu score of 407476. Apple A9 comes up with 2 cores, 1850 MHz frequency and on the other hand, Apple A12 Bionic has 6 cores and 2490 MHz frequency.
Go through detailed comparison below to see the actual difference and similarity between both chipsets.
| Specifications | A9 | A12 Bionic |
|---|---|---|
| Total score | 171612 | 407476 |
| Frequency | 1850 MHz | 2490 MHz |
| Max size | 4 GB | 12 GB |
| Max display resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 2688 x 1242 |
AnTuTu Score | ||
| CPU | 70699 | 129259 |
| GPU | 36687 | 148052 |
| Memory | 31959 | 56934 |
| UX | 35338 | 63018 |
| Total score | 171612 | 407476 |
Connectivity Features | ||
| Modem | Qualcomm MDM9635M | |
| 4G support | LTE Cat. 6 | LTE Cat. 18 |
| 5G support | No | No |
| Download speed | Up to 450 Mbps | Up to 1000 Mbps |
| Upload speed | Up to 150 Mbps | Up to 150 Mbps |
| Wi-Fi | 4 | 5 |
| Bluetooth | 4.2 | 5.0 |
Performance | ||
| Processor | 2x 1.85 GHz – Twister | 2x 2.49 GHz – Vortex4x 1.6 GHz – Tempest |
| Cores | 2 | 6 |
| Frequency | 1850 MHz | 2490 MHz |
| Instruction set | ARMv8-A | ARMv8.3-A |
| L2 cache | 3 MB | 8 MB |
| L3 cache | 8 MB | |
| Process | 14 nanometers | 7 nanometers |
| Transistor count | 2 billion | 6.9 billion |
| TDP | 5 W | 6 W |
Geekbench Score | ||
| Image compression | 53.4 Mpixels/s | 131.35 Mpixels/s |
| Face detection | 9.04 images/s | 17.45 images/s |
| Speech recognition | 21.9 words/s | 70.4 words/s |
| Machine learning | 26.3 images/s | 58.9 images/s |
| Camera shooting | 12.2 images/s | 17.75 images/s |
| HTML 5 | 1.34 Mnodes/s | 3.17 Mnodes/s |
| SQLite | 313 Krows/s | 670.45 Krows/s |
Graphics | ||
| GPU name | PowerVR GT7600 | Apple A12 Bionic GPU |
| Architecture | Rogue | |
| GPU frequency | 650 MHz | |
| Execution units | 6 | 4 |
| Shading units | 192 | |
| Vulkan version | 1.1 | 1.1 |
| OpenCL version | 1.2 | 2.0 |
| DirectX version | 11 | 12 |
Memory Info | ||
| Memory type | LPDDR4 | LPDDR4X |
| Memory frequency | 1333 MHz | 2133 MHz |
| Bus | 2x 32 Bit | 1x 64 Bit |
| Max bandwidth | 14.9 Gbit/s | 34.1 Gbit/s |
| Max size | 4 GB | 12 GB |
Multimedia | ||
| Neural processor (NPU) | No | Yes |
| Storage type | NVMe | NVMe |
| Max display resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 2688 x 1242 |
| Max camera resolution | 1x 32MP, 2x 12MP | 2x 12MP |
| Video capture | 4K at 30FPS | 4K at 60FPS |
| Video playback | 4K at 30FPS | 4K at 60FPS |
| Video codecs | H.264, H.265 | H.264, H.265, Motion JPEG |
| Audio codecs | AAC, AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV | Protected AAC, AAC?LC, Apple Lossless, HE?AAC, Linear PCM, AAX ? AAX+, HE?AAC v2, MP3 |
Apple A9 has been announced on September 2015 whereas Apple A12 Bionic has been announced on September 2018. Check out detailed comparison with key specs below:
Benchmark measures the performance of the CPU. Geekbench is a benchmark that measures a processor's single core performance and AnTuTu score is the most popular and trustable benchmarking score which evaluates multi core performance. A9 has an AnTuTu benchmark score of 171612 points with CPU, GPU, Memory, UX score 70699, 36687, 31959, 35338 respectively.
CPU speed shows how many processing cycles per second can be executed by a CPU. A9 comes up with the architecture of Rogue and A12 Bionic comes up with architecture of undefined. Former one has 2 core and 1850 MHz frequency and latter has 6 cores and 2490 MHz frequency. A larger cache time leads to faster performance.
First chipset has max size of 4 GB and Apple A12 Bionic has max size of 4 GB. It shows the maximum amount of memory supported by a chipset.
In terms of multimedia, A9 has No NPU with storage type as NVMe and A12 Bionic has Yes NPU and NVMe storage type.