iOS 4.3 Hints at More Powerful Graphics.

9to5Mac has pointed out some new graphics drivers in iOS 4.3. The drivers aren’t used on any of Apple’s iDevices so it’s likely that they will be in the next hardware refresh. The drivers are for the PowerVR SGX543 GPU whereas the current lineup uses the PowerVR SGX 535. Here’s the significant difference between the two:

The SGX543 is said to deliver performance of 35 million polygons per second and a filtrate of 1 billion pixels per second when running at 200 MHz, compared to 28 million polygons per second and a filtrate of 500 million pixels for the SGX535 running at the same clock speed. In addition, the SGX543 offers support for the Apple-backed OpenCL specification that allows applications to harness untapped potential of both CPUs and GPUs for processing purposes. Finally, the SGX543 support multi-core configurations allowing for even greater performance.