GIGABYTE BRIX Pro: A Second Look at the Intel i7-4770R with Iris Pro HD 5200
by Ganesh T S on June 14, 2014 5:00 PM ESTGaming Performance Evaluation
The gaming credentials of the BRIX Pro received a huge marketing boost when it was distributed as a 'Steam Machine' at the Steam Developers Conference earlier this year. Based on paper specifications alone, the BRIX Pro should be able to perform much better than any other previous Intel IGP. For the purpose of benchmarking, we chose five different games (Company of Heroes 2, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite and DiRT Showdown) at three different quality levels. For today's review, we have numbers from the BRIX Pro's current configuration, the Intel D54250WYKH NUC (HD 5000) and the BRIX Pro with the configuration from the earlier review. In addition, we also dusted off a old gaming mini-PC, the ASRock Vision 3D 252B and processed our gaming benchmarks on that unit's GT 540M using the latest NVIDIA drivers.
Corsair Flash Voyager GS - A Portable Steam Drive
As someone focusing on HTPCs and multimedia aspects, I rarely get to process gaming benchmarks, even while evaluating GPUs. One of the aspects that I feared was spending lot of time in installing the same games again and again on different PCs under the review scanner. The solution was to go the Steam route. Unfortunately, Steam also likes to keep the game files updated. A quick online search revealed that Steam could make use of an external drive for storing the game executables and downloadable content.
While searching for the ideal external drive to use for this purpose, Corsair came forward with their Flash Voyager GS USB 3.0 drive. The 128 GB capacity was more than enough for all the games that I planned to use for benchmarking. The 'thumb drive' nature meant that shuttling it from one system to another couldn't be any simpler. However, the deal clincher was the advertised read speeds of 275 MBps. With the Steam drive on-the-go use-case being read-heavy, the Corsair Flash Voyager GS USB 3.0 128GB Flash Drive became my portable steam drive.
Benchmark Numbers
We see that the extra CPU grunt as well as the more powerful GPU clearly make the BRIX Pro stand out. Most of the games also benefit from the higher DRAM speeds (particularly at higher quality levels). The gaming credentials also outweigh that of the ASRock Vision 3D 252B, a bonafide gaming mini-PC just two generations old. However, as we shall see in the forthcoming review of the ASRock VisionX 420D, the BRIX Pro's i7-4770R is no match for a discrete mobile GPU such as the Radeon R9 M270X. Relaxing the size and power consumption requirements a bit gives an opportunity for the slightly larger VisionX 420D to deliver a better gaming performance at approximately the same cost.
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dylan522p - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
Fair enough. The SSD market moves so fast can't blame you on that.Yorgos - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
It doesn't matter which is inferior when we are talking for a small percentage in performance, actually in those speeds I don't think it makes any difference. What matters is that samsung offers the best silicon in the market and has the least problems with its ssds so most of the builds will prolly have samsung instead of crucial.cubee - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
How much impact will DDR4 have on iGPU performance?schizoide - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
Alienware alpha (steam machine) will be out in a couple months for $550, which is less than the barebones Brix Pro, with no RAM or storage. The Alpha is an i3 with 4GB RAM and a "maxwell" (real 750ti-ish) GPU and a 500GB HD. It will actually be capable of 1080p gaming, and costs less. It is quite a lot larger than the brix, but still small compared to any other computer. Oh, and you get an x360 controller and a win8.1 license too.Morawka - Sunday, June 15, 2014 - link
750ti wont run 1080p but in about 1/3rd popular titles.. A 760 is really needed to run 1080p comfortably with a decent list of settings.Qwertilot - Sunday, June 15, 2014 - link
The sort of people buying this sort of thing/ a 750ti aren't setting obsessed :) 750ti well ahead of this things performance of course and about the minimum you want to be taken half way seriously as a gaming desktop.Interesting to see how close Broadwell K can get though, with the improved/larger GPU stuff and I'd presume a somewhat larger overall power budget to boot.
schizoide - Sunday, June 15, 2014 - link
Yeah pretty much this. It won't run 1080p on ultra settings in all titles, but if you turn down the options a bit they will run smoothly.tipoo - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
I'm curious in the lower end of the BRIX, especially for a parent computer. The one at $250 with the AMD APU. Seems like a whole lot of compute power for that much money.schizoide - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
The low-end brix/nucs are a lot more interesting, yeah. Either as perfectly fine little desktops, steam streaming clients, or HTPCs. The high-end ones suck, because the GPUs are not comparable to the current console generation.TiGr1982 - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - link
As a funny fact, this little box (based on Haswell i7) is faster than Core i7-4960X (Ivy Bridge-E) in single-threaded CPU performance (because the latter haxacore is based on older uarch).