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
Performance Metrics - I
The Intel Core m3-6Y30 Compute Stick was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. Not all benchmarks were processed on all the machines due to updates in our testing procedures. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same. In the first section, we will be looking at SYSmark 2014, as well as some of the Futuremark benchmarks.
BAPCo SYSmark 2014
BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of office productivity, media creation and data/financial analysis. Scores are meant to be compared against a reference desktop (HP ProDesk 600 G1 with a Core i3-4130, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive) that scores 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.
Since SYSmark 2014 was not processed on any of of the PCs in our comparison list, we present the scores obtained in the three iterations of the benchmark above. Obviously, a 7.5W TDP Skylake Core M is no match for a 54W Haswell Core i3. However, it still manages to delivery more than 70% of its performance for business workloads.
Futuremark PCMark 8
PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system. Most of the PCs in our comparison list are equipped with anaemic Atom processors, and the Core m3-6Y30 manages to easily better them in performance despite the form factor limitation.
Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks
3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R15
We have moved on from R11.5 to R15 for 3D rendering evaluation. CINEBENCH R15 provides three benchmark modes - OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results.
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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.
--
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.