ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-1260P and 4X4 BOX-5800U Review: Alder Lake-P and Cezanne UCFF Faceoff
by Ganesh T S on August 5, 2022 8:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- AMD
- Intel
- UCFF
- Mini-PC
- ASRock Industrial
- Cezanne
- Alder Lake-P
System Performance: Miscellaneous Workloads
Standardized benchmarks such as UL's PCMark 10 and BAPCo's SYSmark take a holistic view of the system and process a wide range of workloads to arrive at a single score. Some systems are required to excel at specific tasks - so it is often helpful to see how a computer performs in specific scenarios such as rendering, transcoding, JavaScript execution (web browsing), etc. This section presents focused benchmark numbers for specific application scenarios.
3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R23
We use CINEBENCH R23 for 3D rendering evaluation. R23 provides two benchmark modes - single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of different PC configurations in both supported modes provided us the following results.
As expected, Alder Lake-P retains the single threaded crown, and the Cezanne system delivers multi-threaded performance that is way ahead of any system in the list based on an Intel processor.
Transcoding: Handbrake 1.5.1
Handbrake is one of the most user-friendly open source transcoding front-ends in the market. It allows users to opt for either software-based higher quality processing or hardware-based fast processing in their transcoding jobs. Our new test suite uses the 'Tears of Steel' 4K AVC video as input and transcodes it with a quality setting of 19 to create a 720p AVC stream and a 1080p HEVC stream.
Software transcoding loves a lot of high-performance cores, and we can see the 8C/16T configurataion with Zen 3 cores handily besting the 4P / 8E combination in Alder Lake-P.
The QuickSync AVC / HEVC engine continues to remain the same between Tiger Lake and Alder Lake, except for a minor bump in clock speeds that get reflected in the transcoding rates above.
On the other hand, the VCE performance remains essentially the same between Renoir and Cezanne for the flagship SKUs.
Archiving: 7-Zip 21.7
The 7-Zip benchmark is carried over from our previous test suite with an update to the latest version of the open source compression / decompression software.
Multiple cores help get compression and decompression done faster, and that is reflected in the significant lead enjoyed by the 4X4 BOX-5800U in the above benchmarks.
Web Browsing: JetStream, Speedometer, and Principled Technologies WebXPRT4
Web browser-based workloads have emerged as a major component of the typical home and business PC usage scenarios. For headless systems, many applications based on JavaScript are becoming relevant too. In order to evaluate systems for their JavaScript execution efficiency, we are carrying over the browser-focused benchmarks from the WebKit developers used in our notebook reviews. Hosted at BrowserBench, JetStream 2.0 benchmarks JavaScript and WebAssembly performance, while Speedometer measures web application responsiveness.
From a real-life workload perspective, we also process WebXPRT4 from Principled Technologies. WebXPRT4 benchmarks the performance of some popular JavaScript libraries that are widely used in websites.
Single threaded performance helps in these benchmarks, and the Alder Lake-P system gets a slight edge across all three browser benchmark components.
Application Startup: GIMP 2.10.30
A new addition to our systems test suite is AppTimer - a benchmark that loads up a program and determines how long it takes for it to accept user inputs. We use GIMP 2.10.30 with a 50MB multi-layered xcf file as input. What we test here is the first run as well as the cached run - normally on the first time a user loads the GIMP package from a fresh install, the system has to configure a few dozen files that remain optimized on subsequent opening. For our test we delete those configured optimized files in order to force a fresh load every second time the software is run.
As it turns out, GIMP does optimizations for every CPU thread in the system, which requires that higher thread-count processors take a lot longer to run. So the test runs quick on systems with fewer threads, however fast cores are also needed. The Alder Lake-P system gets the overall edge in this case.
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PeachNCream - Saturday, August 6, 2022 - link
Interesting compute platforms. Its a pity they had to name the AMD variant "4X4" which would feel pretty terrible in terms of putting one on a desk thanks to all the negative connotations surrounding vehicles and their owners that have similar brand identifiers. Its going to inhibit AMD sales in the US significantly because of how few people want to be associated with that part of our subculture, especially now that things are so polarized. Nothing like setting AMD up for failure by people outside the nation that just don't understand the meaning behind appealing to that one sub-group which, thankfully, does not represent everyone in the US even if it is a loud and visible portion of the population.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, August 9, 2022 - link
Tell me you chug soy without telling me you chug soy.SkipPerk - Wednesday, August 31, 2022 - link
I love East Asian English. I lived in Taiwan early in my career, and I think I prefer their English (and adore their innocent love of Americana). My Taiwanese first wife is long gone, but I sincerely hope my current wife (from Thailand) retains that eager, wholesome English with an easy-to-love accent.domih - Saturday, August 6, 2022 - link
Thanks for the review!ASRock 4x4 4800U owner here.
The box is indeed small and looks good. However, it heats pretty quickly when loaded and the blower fan is not silent :-( I guess it should be better with a 5000 series, not sure though.
rexnyc - Monday, August 8, 2022 - link
Thanks for the in depth review. Is it possible to enable XMP on either of these?TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, August 9, 2022 - link
Really disappointing that once again OEMs are screwing AMD by using USB 2.0 on the rar of the AMD box and 3.2 on the intel box.Oxford Guy - Sunday, August 21, 2022 - link
USB 2 has no place on any new equipment in 2022.SkipPerk - Wednesday, August 31, 2022 - link
Does anyone know why AMD boards are getting shipped with USB2? I always use these for peripherals.sjkpublic@gmail.com - Wednesday, August 10, 2022 - link
I can attest to the ASROCK 4x4 4800U - nice NUC. ASROCK support is fantastic. The AMD version has great connectivity. For the 5800U would like 128GB mem instead of 64GB. Fan noise may be an issue. And video rather weak. However I am saving over $200 year on electricity. ASROCK makes great NUCs.Dug - Friday, August 12, 2022 - link
Would be nice if manufacturers would start releasing 6800u variants from AMD.