Apple A12 Bionic vs Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) Benchmark, comparison and differences


Apple A12 Bionic		Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405)
CPU comparison Apple A12 Bionic or Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) - which processor is faster? In this comparison we look at the differences and analyze which of these two CPUs is better. We compare the technical data and benchmark results. The Apple A12 Bionic has 6 cores with 6 threads and clocks with a maximum frequency of 2.49 GHz. Up to 4 GB of memory is supported in 1 memory channels. The Apple A12 Bionic was released in Q3/2018. The Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) has 4 cores with 8 threads and clocks with a maximum frequency of 3.50 GHz. The CPU supports up to 16 GB of memory in 4 memory channels. The Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) was released in Q4/2021.

Apple A series (22)	Family	AMD Ryzen 5 (85)
Apple A12/A12X/A12Z (3)	CPU group	AMD Aerith (Steam Deck) (1)
12	Generation	3
A12	Architecture	Aerith (Zen 2)
Mobile	Segment	Mobile
Apple A11 Bionic	Predecessor	--
Apple A13 Bionic	Successor	Valve Steam Deck (2023 Refresh)

CPU Cores and Base Frequency The Apple A12 Bionic has 6 CPU cores and can calculate 6 threads in parallel. The clock frequency of the Apple A12 Bionic is 2.49 GHz while the Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) has 4 CPU cores and 8 threads can calculate simultaneously. The clock frequency of the Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) is at 2.40 GHz (3.50 GHz).
Apple A12 Bionic	Characteristic	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405)
6	Cores	4
6	Threads	8
hybrid (big.LITTLE)	Core architecture	normal
No	Hyperthreading	Yes
No	Overclocking ?	No
2.49 GHz 2x Vortex	A-Core	2.40 GHz (3.50 GHz)
1.59 GHz 4x Tempest	B-Core	--
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Processors with the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can process many calculations, especially audio, image and video processing, much faster than classic processors. Algorithms for ML improve their performance the more data they have collected via software. ML tasks can be processed up to 10,000 times faster than with a classic processor.
Apple A12 Bionic	Characteristic	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405)
Apple Neural Engine	AI hardware	--
8 Neural cores @ 5 TOPS	AI specifications	--

Internal Graphics The Apple A12 Bionic or Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) has integrated graphics, called iGPU for short. The iGPU uses the system's main memory as graphics memory and sits on the processor's die.
Apple A12	GPU	AMD Custom Radeon Graphics (Steam Deck)
1.13 GHz	GPU frequency	1.00 GHz
--	GPU (Turbo)	1.60 GHz
9	GPU Generation	--
7 nm	Technology	7 nm
1	Max. displays	2
16	Compute units	8
256	Shader	512
No	Hardware Raytracing	No
No	Frame Generation	No
4 GB	Max. GPU Memory	8 GB
--	DirectX Version	12

Hardware codec support A photo or video codec that is accelerated in hardware can greatly accelerate the working speed of a processor and extend the battery life of notebooks or smartphones when playing videos.
Apple A12	GPU	AMD Custom Radeon Graphics (Steam Deck)
Decode / Encode	Codec h265 / HEVC (8 bit)	Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode	Codec h265 / HEVC (10 bit)	Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode	Codec h264	Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode	Codec VP9	Decode / Encode
Decode / Encode	Codec VP8	Decode / Encode
No	Codec AV1	No
Decode	Codec AVC	Decode / Encode
Decode	Codec VC-1	Decode
Decode / Encode	Codec JPEG	Decode / Encode

Memory & PCIe The Apple A12 Bionic can use up to 4 GB of memory in 1 memory channels. The maximum memory bandwidth is 34.1 GB/s. The Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) supports up to 16 GB of memory in 4 memory channels and achieves a memory bandwidth of up to 88.0 GB/s.
Apple A12 Bionic	Characteristic	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405)
LPDDR4X-4266	Memory	LPDDR5-5500
4 GB	Max. Memory	16 GB
1 (Single Channel)	Memory channels	4 (Quad Channel)
34.1 GB/s	Max. Bandwidth	88.0 GB/s
No	ECC	No
8.00 MB	L2 Cache	2.00 MB
--	L3 Cache	4.00 MB
--	PCIe version	3.0
--	PCIe lanes	8
--	PCIe Bandwidth	7.9 GB/s
Thermal Management The thermal design power (TDP for short) of the Apple A12 Bionic is 6 W, while the Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) has a TDP of 15 W. The TDP specifies the necessary cooling solution that is required to cool the processor sufficiently.
Apple A12 Bionic	Characteristic	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405)
6 W	TDP (PL1 / PBP)	15 W
--	TDP (PL2)	--
--	TDP up	--
--	TDP down	4 W
--	Tjunction max.	100 °C
Technical details The Apple A12 Bionic is manufactured in 7 nm and has 8.00 MB cache. The Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) is manufactured in 7 nm and has a 6.00 MB cache.
Apple A12 Bionic	Characteristic	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405)
7 nm	Technology	7 nm
Chiplet	Chip design	Monolithic
Armv8-A (64 bit)	Instruction set (ISA)	x86-64 (64 bit)
--	ISA extensions	SSE4a, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX2, FMA3
--	Socket	FF3
None	Virtualization	AMD-V, SVM
No	AES-NI	Yes
iOS	Operating systems	SteamOS (Arch Linux)
Q3/2018	Release date	Q4/2021
--	Release price	--

show more data		show more data

Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz buy now on Amazon and save! Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 2.40 GHz (3.50 GHz) buy now on Amazon and save!

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Average performance in benchmarks

⌀ Single core performance in 2 CPU benchmarks

Apple A12 Bionic (100%)

Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) (88%)

⌀ Multi core performance in 2 CPU benchmarks

Apple A12 Bionic (65%)

Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) (100%)

Geekbench 5, 64bit (Single-Core)

Geekbench 5 is a cross plattform benchmark that heavily uses the systems memory. A fast memory will push the result a lot. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	1116 (100%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 3.50 GHz	849 (76%)

Geekbench 5, 64bit (Multi-Core)

Geekbench 5 is a cross plattform benchmark that heavily uses the systems memory. A fast memory will push the result a lot. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	2731 (76%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 2.80 GHz	3592 (100%)

Geekbench 6 (Single-Core)

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark for modern computers, notebooks and smartphones. What is new is an optimized utilization of newer CPU architectures, e.g. based on the big.LITTLE concept and combining CPU cores of different sizes. The single-core benchmark only evaluates the performance of the fastest CPU core, the number of CPU cores in a processor is irrelevant here.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	1286 (100%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 3.50 GHz	1278 (99%)

Geekbench 6 (Multi-Core)

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark for modern computers, notebooks and smartphones. What is new is an optimized utilization of newer CPU architectures, e.g. based on the big.LITTLE concept and combining CPU cores of different sizes. The multi-core benchmark evaluates the performance of all of the processor's CPU cores. Virtual thread improvements such as AMD SMT or Intel's Hyper-Threading have a positive impact on the benchmark result.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	2353 (54%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 2.80 GHz	4365 (100%)

iGPU - FP32 Performance (Single-precision GFLOPS)

The theoretical computing performance of the internal graphics unit of the processor with simple accuracy (32 bit) in GFLOPS. GFLOPS indicates how many billion floating point operations the iGPU can perform per second.


	Apple A12 Bionic Apple A12 @ 1.13 GHz	576 (35%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) AMD Custom Radeon Graphics (Steam Deck) @ 1.60 GHz	1638 (100%)

Cinebench 2024 (Single-Core)

The Cinebench 2024 benchmark is based on the Redshift rendering engine, which is also used in Maxon's 3D program Cinema 4D. The benchmark runs are each 10 minutes long to test whether the processor is limited by its heat generation.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	0 (0%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 3.50 GHz	57 (100%)

Cinebench 2024 (Multi-Core)

The Multi-Core test of the Cinebench 2024 benchmark uses all cpu cores to render using the Redshift rendering engine, which is also used in Maxons Cinema 4D. The benchmark run is 10 minutes long to test whether the processor is limited by its heat generation.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	0 (0%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 3.50 GHz	275 (100%)

Cinebench R23 (Single-Core)

Cinebench R23 is the successor of Cinebench R20 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	0 (0%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 3.50 GHz	975 (100%)

Cinebench R23 (Multi-Core)

Cinebench R23 is the successor of Cinebench R20 and is also based on the Cinema 4 Suite. Cinema 4 is a worldwide used software to create 3D forms. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	0 (0%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 2.80 GHz	4359 (100%)

AnTuTu 8 Benchmark

The AnTuTu 8 Benchmark measures the performance of a SoC. AnTuTu benchmarks the CPU, GPU, Memory as well as the UX (User Experience) by simulating browser and app usage. AnTuTu can benchmark any ARM CPU that runs under Android or iOS. Devices may not be directly compareable if the benchmark has been performed under different operating systems.

In the AnTuTu 8 benchmark, the single-core performance of a processor is only slightly weighted. The evaluation consists of the multi-core performance of the processor, the speed of the RAM and the performance of the internal graphics.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	425605 (100%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 2.40 GHz	0 (0%)

Estimated results for PassMark CPU Mark

Some of the CPUs listed below have been benchmarked by CPU-monkey. However the majority of CPUs have not been tested and the results have been estimated by a CPU-monkey’s secret proprietary formula. As such they do not accurately reflect the actual Passmark CPU mark values and are not endorsed by PassMark Software Pty Ltd.


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	4846 (100%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 2.80 GHz	0 (0%)

Performance for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

Processors with the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can process many calculations, especially audio, image and video processing, much faster than classic processors. The performance is given in the number (trillions) of arithmetic operations per second (TOPS).


	Apple A12 Bionic 6C 6T @ 2.49 GHz	5 (100%)
	Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405) 4C 8T @ 2.40 GHz	0 (0%)


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10.		Apple A11 Bionic vs Apple A12 Bionic

Apple A12 Bionic vs Valve Steam Deck (AMD Custom APU 0405)

CPU comparison with benchmarks

CPU comparison

CPU Cores and Base Frequency

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Internal Graphics

Hardware codec support

Memory & PCIe

Thermal Management

Technical details