The Intel Compute Stick (Core m3-6Y30) Review
by Ganesh T S on June 27, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Core M
- Skylake
- HDMI Stick
- Compute Stick
HTPC Credentials
The Core m3-6Y30 Compute Stick is definitely a better candidate for home-theater duties compared to the previous ones in the family. The primary reason is that the BIOS allows the fan to be completely turned off. Video decoding is hardly taxing for the system - we even saw the power consumption with the desktop at idle being sometimes more than the power consumption while playing Netflix using the Windows 10 Store app. The second reason is the availability of full HD audio bitstreaming (including DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD), something that was missing in both the Bay Trail-T and Cherry Trail Compute Sticks.
Refresh Rate Accurancy
Starting with Haswell, Intel, AMD and NVIDIA have been on par with respect to display refresh rate accuracy. The most important refresh rate for videophiles is obviously 23.976 Hz (the 23 Hz setting). As expected, the Intel Core m3-6Y30 Compute Stick has no trouble with refreshing the display appropriately in this setting.
The gallery below presents some of the other refresh rates that we tested out. The first statistic in madVR's OSD indicates the display refresh rate.
Network Streaming Efficiency
Evaluation of OTT playback efficiency was done by playing back our standard YouTube test stream and five minutes from our standard Netflix test title. Using HTML5, the YouTube stream plays back a 1080p H.264 encoding. Since YouTube now defaults to HTML5 for video playback, we have stopped evaluating Adobe Flash acceleration. Note that only NVIDIA exposes GPU and VPU loads separately. Both Intel and AMD bundle the decoder load along with the GPU load. The following two graphs show the power consumption at the wall for playback of the HTML5 stream in Mozilla Firefox (v 47.0).
GPU load was around 16.26% for the YouTube HTML5 stream and 0.014% for the steady state 6 Mbps Netflix streaming case.
Netflix streaming evaluation was done using the Windows 10 Netflix app. Manual stream selection is available (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S) and debug information / statistics can also be viewed (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D). Statistics collected for the YouTube streaming experiment were also collected here.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks
In order to evaluate local file playback, we concentrate on EVR-CP and Kodi. We already know that EVR works quite well even with the Intel IGP for our test streams. The decoder used was LAV Filters bundled with MPC-HC v1.7.7.
In our earlier reviews, we focused on presenting the GPU loading and power consumption at the wall in a table (with problematic streams in bold). Starting with the Broadwell NUC review, we decided to represent the GPU load and power consumption in a graph with dual Y-axes. Nine different test streams of 90 seconds each were played back with a gap of 30 seconds between each of them. The characteristics of each stream are annotated at the bottom of the graph. Note that the GPU usage is graphed in red and needs to be considered against the left axis, while the at-wall power consumption is graphed in green and needs to be considered against the right axis.
Frame drops are evident whenever the GPU load consistently stays above the 85 - 90% mark. We find that MPC-HC with DXVA2 Native decoding can load up the GPU to more than 40%, while Kodi keeps everything around 20% at the maximum.
The Compute Stick has no trouble in playing back any of our test streams.
Moving on to the codec support, the Intel HD Graphics 515 is a known quantity with respect to the scope of supported hardware accelerated codecs. DXVA Checker serves as a confirmation.
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Ryan Smith - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
No. That would be a terrible business strategy since it would undermine your trust in our reviews.We have run sponsored content in the past - which was clearly labeled - but that is always news/analysis and such; never reviews.
Otherwise I direct you to our About page section on sampling.
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The majority of what we review is provided directly by the manufacturer of the product. The product samples are delivered to our reviewers with the expectations of us providing a fair, thorough review. There is never any implicit guarantee of positive or negative, just that the review will be done as well as we can.
In the early days, when we were a much smaller site, manufacturers would threaten to withhold future review samples in response to a negative review (not so blatantly as that of course). We have quietly lost and gained the support of manufacturers throughout the years based on reviews. I've personally had many arguments with manufacturers who dare attempt to either knowingly deceive our readers or use advertising dollars or product support to influence our reviews.
Today, we are large enough to avoid these petty discussions of withholding review samples. Most manufacturers know that one way or another we'll get our hands on a product for review and don't try to play these sorts of games. Rarely we are faced with a manufacturer or advertiser who is looking to influence our content. We have a firm internal policy in place to deliver honest, balanced reviews to the best of our ability - regardless of external pressures. Fortunately, as I mentioned earlier, we have been around long enough and are large enough to avoid this being an issue in the vast majority of situations.
Wolfpup - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
Huh... I may have use for a tiny, simple server at some point, and one of these would about fit the bill. Just need to add a USB Ethernet port and upgrade Windows 10 to Pro and it should work...bill.rookard - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
You might be better off getting some cheap hardware off eBay at this point until the pricing comes down. Pick up a Dell Optiplex SFF for $100ish (just got one for $90 myself), outfit it with a notebook drive for the OS and a big HDD for storage and run it with a Linux system with Samba. That would do the trick nicely.beginner99 - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
Even 64 GB storage is on the low side. Common. 128 Gb would add $5 max to the BOM. Sell it to me for $30 more and I would take it over 64 gb. NUC sounds like a better investment and more flexible.Realvn - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
Ofcouse that core m series are the best perform stick, fastest at it size, best perform per watt, best...But the price too high, very high of it class, very high compare to any NUC at p/p
Sivar - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
The use of a tiny fan concerns me. It's often the little fans that die young. Perhaps building the enclosure from (admittedly expensive) aluminum would be sufficient to allow for a solid state design?Meteor2 - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
It only runs briefly, if at all.mostlyharmless - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
Why 64-bit MS, with only 4GB RAM?The_Assimilator - Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - link
Because 32-bit is dead and needs to stay that way.harijan - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
Contrary to some of these comments. I love these reviews Ganesh. I have a bay trail computestick, and it runs OK for what I do with it. I loaded it with ubuntu and have it running multiple lxc containers.I think I'll skip this generation, although I can't wait for next years model, hopefully with HDMI 2.0. Once they have that, I think the next Atom, or whatever Intel use in this segment, based model will be a no brainer in most HTPC situations.