yes, glbenchmark, and quadrant.
whats so hard to believe? the sgx540 is from 4 years ago. 2007. the resolution of this device has 2.4x the number of pixels thus it needs to work even harder. an overclock doesnt help it that much.
It's not from 2007. The first SGX540 device was launched in mid-2010. It's a competent GPU, although I do agree that it is getting long in the tooth. It was the best GPU of 2010, and it's being used in a new "high-end" device 1-2 months short of 2011.
But, the Mali400 isn't the answer either. That thing has amazing fill-rate, but poor geometric performance. On a 720p display today, it will outperform the SGX540. But, as you add geometric detail (which newer games will do, the screen on this device will always be 720p), the SGX540 will take no noticeable performance hit, while the Mali will choke.
I personally believe that, due to their characteristics, the SGX540 is the lesser of two evils. It's clearly superior to the Adreno 220 and the GeForce ULP. But, what boggles my mind, is that no OEM decided to use the SGX543, let alone the 543MP2 (iPad 2, iPhone 4s) or 543MP4 (PS Vita).
Also, the benchmarks you cited look questionable to me. We've seen how this GPU performs on final hardware. Let's see how it looks when reviewers get the final unit for testing. Results should be significantly better.
EDIT: Last thing is that the benchmarks on that site you listed are done at the device's native resolution, or so it seems. If this is the case, you're benchmarking a 720p device against a qHD device. That would explain why performance is less than the Bionic, which uses the same GPU at a lower clock speed.
Anandtech has a good write-up where they forced each device to render 720p (off-screen, as it has to be downsampled). This is closer to being an apples to apple comparison. Although it favors high fill-rate GPUs (like the Mali, they should have had a separate test at qHD), it does give a more accurate picture of the weaknesses between the chips.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4686/samsung-galaxy-s-2-international-review-the-best-redefined/17
Here you can see that anything that is geometry limited, the Mali is horribly weak. In anything that is fill-rate limited, the SGX540 is competent, but falls way behind the Mali. My point is this: As new games come out that are compatible with the Nexus, the fill-rate requirements won't raise drastically. However, geometric use will increase. This will cause the performance hit on the Mali to be far more noticeable. At what point does each GPU become unplayable? My bet is that the Mali does first simply because of how real games are developed. However, that's my best guess. If you disagree with me, perhaps a Galaxy SII is the better device for you.
Had these tests been done at qHD, the fill-rate wouldn't have been an issue, which means that while the Mali wouldn't show better results, the SGX540 would. So, if you're comparing the Galaxy S2 to a Bionic (or RAZR), the slight benefits of the Mali today are grossly outweighed by the future proof design of the SGX tomorrow.
