The ASRock DeskMini A300 Review: An Affordable DIY AMD Ryzen mini-PC
by Ganesh T S on April 26, 2019 8:00 AM ESTHTPC Credentials - YouTube and Netflix Streaming
Streaming of 4K OTT content with YouTube and Netflix has become mainstream. HDR displays have also started becoming affordable. In order to evaluate YouTube HDR streaming support, we have the Mystery Box's Peru 8K HDR 60FPS video as our test sample. On PCs running Windows, it is recommended that HDR streaming videos be viewed using the Microsoft Edge browser after putting the desktop in HDR mode.
HDR content on YouTube is encoded exclusively in VP9 Profile 2. On systems supporting hardware accelerated decoding of VP9 Profile 2, Edge streams and decodes the HDR stream. The DeskMini A300 passes this test, and we can see HDR YouTube videos, as shown in the picture above.
Various metrics of interest such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first four minutes of the playback of the above video. The numbers are graphed below.
Decoding 4Kp60 VP9 Profile 2 videos consumes between 70 and 90% of one of the decoder engines. We also see some Direct3D loading of the order of 70% initially (when the stream being played back is at a lower resolution and needs to be upscaled to 4K). Once the stream stabilizes and the system starts decoding the 4K stream, the Direct3D loading settles around 50%. The average at-wall power consumption for streaming 4K YouTube HDR videos is around 33W.
4K HDR streaming in Netflix requires support for hardware-accelerated decoding of HEVC Main 10 videos. Microsoft removed the in-built HEVC decoding capabilities of Windows 10 in the 2017 Fall Creators Update, and replaced it with an extension that had to be downloaded from the Microsoft Store. Without the extension, playback is restricted to 1080p non-HDR streams encoded in H.264. In addition to the decoding capabilities, the system also needs to support PlayReady 3.0 DRM. In our tests with the Radeon 19.4.2 driver release, we ran into major problems.
Our usual testing flow involves the installation of the HEVC Video Extensions and the Netflix apps from the Microsoft Store. After configuring the Netflix login credentials, we attempt to play back Season 4 Episode 4 of the Netflix Test Patterns title. Unfortunately, the DeskMini A300 behaves in an unexpected manner when subject to the above steps. As soon as the playback of the title starts, the screen goes blank and the display driver crashes.
Windows reverts to the basic display driver, and the Netflix title continues to play back. However, instead of the expected 4Kp60 HEVC Main 10 stream (with HDR), we only get a 1080p30 AVC stream. In order to prevent the crashing of the driver in the course of our evaluation, we opted to uninstall the HEVC Video Extensions app, and make use of only the AVC decoder built into Windows. Without the HEVC Video Extensions, the driver has no problem with standard 1080p Netflix streaming. The OS screenshot facilities obviously can't capture the video being played back. However, the debug OSD (reachable by Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D) can be recorded.
The (avc) entry corresponding to the Video Track in the debug OSD, the Framerate (30.000), and with the A/V bitrate details (192 kbps / 5800 kbps) indicate that we are only getting a low quality 1080p stream compared to the best available one (4Kp60 16 Mbps HEVC Main 10 HDR stream). Similar to the YouTube streaming case, metrics such as GPU usage and at-wall power consumption were recorded for the first three minutes of the playback of the title. The numbers are graphed below.
1080p30 AVC playback is a walk in the park for modern computing systems. We see that the Direct3D loading is only around 30% and the decoder usage is less than 20% in the steady state. The former is mainly due The at-wall power consumption is around 24W for this workload.
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ganeshts - Friday, April 26, 2019 - link
Actually, it is OK with Kodi (XBMC) and Microsoft Edge / VideoUI app on Windows. It is only VLC and LAV Video Decoder having issues.DigitalFreak - Friday, April 26, 2019 - link
" The hardware itself is actually rather capable (as noted above), but the the current state of the Radeon drivers holds it back."Same old story that's been going on for a decade or more with ATI/AMD.
Irata - Friday, April 26, 2019 - link
Some more power consumption numbers: (A300 vs. A310)Idle power: 81%
Max power consumption (stressing CPU+GPU): 131%.
But this gives us:
- Gaming performance: no numbers for the A310, however the A300 has an average gaming performance of 204 % vs. Bean Canyon (using the fps shown as default) at 126 of its power consumption, so again it is more power efficient.
Cinebench Muti-threaded rendering: 137% of he A310's performance @ (using the max power consumption as a guideline) 131% of the power consumption.
Note: It would be nice to show the power consumption for all benchmarks, i.e. gaming, 7-zip, cinebench....
Mil0 - Sunday, April 28, 2019 - link
I was thinking along this lines, thanks for doing the math. It seems the A300 is basically always more power efficient.Especially given that machines like this will spend a lot of time at or near idle. If the light load scenario comes close to the 81% power usage, in the long run this could save quite a bit of power.
niva - Monday, April 29, 2019 - link
So you guys are reaching a different conclusion than what the article stated in terms of efficiency?In the conclusions paragraph it stated that this machine is "not particularly energy efficent."
I also glanced at the numbers initially and was confused as to how they reached that conclusion but didn't do math. Why did the author use that language?
mikato - Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - link
The language you refer to is the author comparing it to the Intel Mini-PC competitors, and not just the other ASRock DeskMini. Commenters Irata and Mil0 above were comparing DeskMini A300 vs DeskMini A310.Irata - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link
That is correct, although in the case of gaming results, I had to compare it to another system since there was no data for the A310.The thought was, how does the performance delta align with the power consumption delta. Now it seems that Ganesh disagrees as I am using linear values but imho this approach seems valid to me as well.
So if it has 10% less performance but uses 10% less power, at least for me the energy efficieny is identical. Same if it has 10% more performance but uses 10% more power.
plonk420 - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link
never had an issue with drivers on AMD except for an edge case: trying to install newer ones on Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise.sadly this might be an issue with the disconnect between OEM and AMD's drivers
Irata - Friday, April 26, 2019 - link
I found this a bit odd:"For traditional office and business workloads, it gets the job done; and while it's not particularly energy efficient, the upfront cost itself is lower".
Looking at the Bapco Sysmark overall power consumption numbers, the DeskMini A300 and 310 have basically identical numbers (32.26 vs. 31.62 Wh). Seeing the the performance delta is not considerable I find this statement a bit odd. And these are Bapco Sysmark numbers which need to be taken with a rock of salt.
davie887 - Friday, April 26, 2019 - link
Intel CAN'T be shown in anything other that their best light.Anyone who questions them has to prepare for the consequences :D