Intel D54250WYKH Haswell NUC Kit with 2.5" Drive Slot Mini-Review
by Ganesh T S on May 18, 2014 10:15 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - II
In this section, we mainly look at benchmark modes in programs used on a day-to-day basis, i.e, application performance and not synthetic workloads.
x264 Benchmark
First off, we have some video encoding benchmarks courtesy of x264 HD Benchmark v5.0.
7-Zip
7-Zip is a very effective and efficient compression program, often beating out OpenCL accelerated commercial programs in benchmarks even while using just the CPU power. 7-Zip has a benchmarking program that provides tons of details regarding the underlying CPU's efficiency. In this subsection, we are interested in the compression and decompression MIPS ratings when utilizing all the available threads.
TrueCrypt
As businesses (and even home consumers) become more security conscious, the importance of encryption can't be overstated. CPUs supporting the AES-NI instruction for accelerating the encryption and decryption processes have, till now, been the higher end SKUs. However, with Bay Trail, even the lowly Atom series has gained support for AES-NI. The i5-4250U in the Core-ML320 has AES-NI support. TrueCrypt is a popular open-source disk encryption program which can take advantage of the AES-NI capabilities. The TrueCrypt internal benchmark provides some interesting cryptography-related numbers to ponder. In the graph below, we can get an idea of how fast a TrueCrypt volume would behave in the Core-ML320 and how it would compare with other select PCs. This is a purely CPU feature / clock speed based test. So, we don't expect any difference between the D54250WYK and D54250WYKH in this benchmark.
Agisoft Photoscan
Agisoft PhotoScan is a commercial program that converts 2D images into 3D point maps, meshes and textures. The program designers sent us a command line version in order to evaluate the efficiency of various systems that go under our review scanner. The command line version has two benchmark modes, one using the CPU and the other using both the CPU and GPU (via OpenCL). The benchmark takes around 50 photographs and does four stages of computation:
- Stage 1: Align Photographs
- Stage 2: Build Point Cloud (capable of OpenCL acceleration)
- Stage 3: Build Mesh
- Stage 4: Build Textures
We record the time taken for each stage. Since various elements of the software are single threaded, others multithreaded, and some use GPUs, it is interesting to record the effects of CPU generations, speeds, number of cores, DRAM parameters and the GPU using this software.
Dolphin Emulator
Wrapping up our application benchmark numbers is the Dolphin Emulator benchmark mode results.
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ganeshts - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
The Wi-Fi drivers used for testing were installed by Wireless_17.0.0_De164.exe downloaded from Intel's AC7260 downloads site on 29th April.I believe the driver version is: 17.0.0.34
I have also seen some strange behaviour with the AC7260 card -- it performs worse than Realtek's 1x1 in some cases, and much behind Broadcom's 2x2 solutions in the PC space. Not sure how much of that is related to the presence of Broadcom in the Nightjawk platform (will present exact numbers in the upcoming reviews)
I have not used WPS on the Nighthawk, but it is entirely possible -- I too had some issues of slow network speeds with certain clients when using the Nighthawk for the first couple of months, but one of the recent firmware updates made it much better
tipoo - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link
I'm curious about that 250 dollar AMD Brix APU based system in this same form factor. Seems like a lot of compute for that much money.ayejay_nz - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link
Are you referring to the GB-BXA8-5545? I'm really looking forward to seeing a review on that unit! Could be a really well priced 'HTPC' streaming box.tipoo - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link
I think it might be, it's the one detailed here. I'd love an Anandtech review of it toohttp://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/review-giga...
It helps that I get free windows licences, but it seems like an awefully competent computer for 250, especially with an SSD, quad core, and 8GB RAM.
nirolf - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
I'm hoping for a Kabini BRIX. With some form digital audio output it would be just great.skiboysteve - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
I just ordered the top of the line mSATA Intel NUCs for a work demo system. Was perfect size and had mounting bracket. I didn't need WiFi either and it had all the ports I needed. Great deal.Hilarious though, when you open the box it has a speaker that goes off with the Intel inside sound. "dun.... Dun dun dun dun"
wintermute000 - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Where are the dual nic models? Would be over them like a rash (quiet always on low power esxi, vcenter+pfsense+ad in a box)fackamato - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Use VLANadityarjun - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Instead of writing "Habey BIS-6922" and "Logic Super Sayian ML320" , just write the relevant configuration or something.Habey whatever doesn't mean anything to me and I just wanted a quick look at benchmarks to see how it would compare to say an i3 or i5 base model cpu.
I wanted to see whether it was about as powerful as a i5 4440 or i3 3220. Please include relevant configurations in your charts!
ganeshts - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Benchmark numbers depend on CPU as well as DRAM configuration (CAS latency / speed). I have been down that path before and the graph just gets too cluttered. That is why we have the table at the bottom of the first page where the dropdown indicates what configuration and price each of the compared systems is.