Although there has been a lot of talk (mostly coming from Apple) that the new A5X is much more powerful than the iPad 2 A5, but according to Futuremark's Peacekeeper benchmark, the processing power of both chips is near identical.

The Futuremark Peacekeepr is an HTML5 based browser performance test that can measure and compare the performance of any browser on any Internet capable device and according to results, Apple iPad 3rd Gen scores 384 points, just a point more than the Apple iPad 2.

Of course, the new iPad pushes more pixels due to its new screen and certainly has improved graphics capabilities, but it looks like the CPU part is pretty much identical.

You can check out the iPad 3 Peacekeeper score here.