The ASRock DeskMini A300 Review: An Affordable DIY AMD Ryzen mini-PC

GPU Performance for Workstation Workloads - SPECviewperf 13

The SPECviewperf benchmark from SPEC provides an idea of the capabilities of the GPU in a workstation from the perspective of different CAD, content creation, and visual data analysis tools. It makes more sense to process these benchmarks on workstations with professional GPUs, but, consumer GPUs are often the choice for machines that need to handle both gaming and professional workloads. Since the Radeon RX Vega 11 performs admirably for an integrated GPU in our gaming tests, we wanted to give the DeskMini A300 a go with the SPECviewperf 13 workloads also.

SPECviewperf 13 includes nine different workloads representative of graphics content and behavior of actual applications. They make use of the OpenGL 4.0 and DirectX 12 APIs under Windows. SPECviewperf 13's workloads (termed viewsets) can officially be run only at two desktop resolutions (1920 x 1080, and 3840 x 2160), and need the display scaling to be set to 100% (DPI of 96). The available viewsets are listed below.

• 3ds Max (3dsmax-06)
• CATIA (catia-05)
• Creo (creo-02)
• Energy (energy-02)
• Maya (maya-05)
• Medical (medical-02)
• Showcase (showcase-02)
• Siemens NX (snx-03)
• Solidworks (sw-04)

The 3ds Max and Showcase viewsets are available only when processing at 1920 x 1080. The rest are available at both resolutions.

We processed SPECviewperf 13 at both resolutions on the ASRock DeskMini A300. The benchmark measures the frame rate at which the GPU renders the scenes in a viewset. Each viewset is composed of different scenes and rendering modes, and the composite score for the viewset is a weighted geometric mean of the FPS measured for the different scenes. In this section, we take a look at how its composite scores stack up against other systems targeting this market segment.

3ds Max (3dsmax-06)

The 3dsmax-06 viewset comprises of 11 different scenes. They have been created from traces of the graphics workload generated by Autodesk 3ds Max 2016 using the default Nitrous DX11 driver. Additional details are available here.

The DeskMini A300 is again the leading iGPU-only system, but, the Bean Canyon NUC's performance is quite close.

CATIA (catia-05)

The catia-05 viewset comprises of 14 different tests created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the CATIA V6 R2012 application from Dassault Systemes. Additional details are available here.

The DeskMini A300 and the Bean Canyon NUC are essentially tied in this workload.

Creo (creo-02)

The creo-02 viewset comprises of 16 different tests created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the Creo 3 and Creo 4 applications from PTC. Additional details are available here.

The Ryzen system is ahead at 1080p, but, falls slightly behind the Bean Canyon NUC at 2160p.

Energy (energy-02)

The energy-02 viewset comprises of 6 different tests based on techniques used by the OpendTect seismic visualization application. Additional details are available here.

The energy-02 workload is a tough nut to crack for SFF systems, and the DeskMini A300 seems to have some trouble in completing the workload properly. At 2160p, all the systems that we are comparing the A300 against had trouble with the workload - hence, we do not have a graph for the workload at that resolution.

Maya (maya-05)

The maya-05 viewset comprises of 10 different tests based on traces of the graphics workload generated by Autodesk Maya 2017. Additional details are available here.

The Bean Canyon NUC edges ahead of the DeskMini A300 for the maya-05 workload at both resolutions.

Medical (medical-02)

The medical-02 viewset comprises of 8 different tests derived from 4 distinct datasets. Each test uses the ImageVis3D volume visualization program's Tuvok rendering core for 2D projections of 3D volumetric grids. Additional details are available here.

The medical-02 viewset represents a clear victory for the DeskMini A300 over other iGPU-only systems.

Showcase (showcase-02)

The showcase-02 viewset comprises of 4 tests created from traces of the Autodesk Showcase 2013 application rendering a racecar model with 8 million vertices using different modes. Additional details are available here.

The showcase-02 viewset sees the Bean Canyon NUC edge slightly ahead of the DeskMini A300.

Siemens NX (snx-03)

The snx-03 viewset comprises of 10 tests created with traces from the graphics workload generated by the NX 8.0 application from Siemens PLM. Additional details are available here.

The snx-03 viewset is similar to the medical-02 viewset in terms of the DeskMini A300 enjoying a clear lead.

Solidworks (sw-04)

The sw-04 viewset comprises of 11 tests created from traces of Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 2013 SP1 application. Additional details are available here.

In this viewset, we see the Bean Canyon NUC come out on top, with the DeskMini A300 tussling it out with the Skull Canyon NUC for the second place amongst the iGPU-only systems.

Overall, for the SPECviewperf 13 workloads, we see that the DeskMini A300 is not a clear winner. There are a couple of viewsets in which the A300 performs significantly better, but, for the most part, the Bean Canyon NUC mounts an excellent challenge. The reasons for this could be two-fold - on one hand, the Radeon drivers for the RX Vega 11 might not be really optimized for these kinds of workloads. On the other, the Bean Canyon NUC employs an Iris Plus 655 GPU which comes with 128MB of eDRAM cache. It is likely that the eDRAM is beneficial for SPECviewperf 13 workloads.