GIGABYTE BRIX Gaming BXi5G-760 mini-PC Review
by Ganesh T S on September 15, 2014 2:30 PM 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. This is simply a test of CPU performance. As expected, the Core i5-4200H can't match up to the i7 parts in the other mini PCs that we compare against.
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 Core i5-4200H in the BXi5G-760 does have AES-NI support. TrueCrypt, a popular open-source disk encryption program 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 GIGABYTE BXi5G-760 and how it would compare with other select PCs. This is a purely CPU feature / clock speed based test.
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. This is again a test of the CPU capabilities, and the Core i5-4200H comes up short against the Core i7-4770R
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
35 Comments
View All Comments
kgh00007 - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
Nice review, I hope you guys get in the Alienware Alpha for review. I think that's going to make a really nice HTPC depending on what GPU is announced for it!WatcherCK - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
Or as another possibility for a heating solution would be to hack on an external radiator ala R295x2, you will loose some of the convenience of the form factor with the addition of an external cooler but given the thermal load of the components it would be more than adequate for cooling this wee box :)SuperVeloce - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
6GB gddr5 ? are they for real?hojnikb - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
They are probobly targeting novice users that dont know better.And 6GB of graphics memory sound real nice.
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
With the heat and throttling problems this BRIX has, how long until it BRIX itself (ba dum tiss).Seriously though, why not use a slightly bigger enclosure along with a geforce 860m? that would have been cheaper, cooler, and quieter.
Laststop311 - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
Rather build a micro atx tower with a MSI gaming twin frozr cooler GTX 770 and i5-4690k tower 70 + psu 60 + 150 mobo + 100 ram + gtx 770 320 + i5-4690k 250 + 120GB crucial m500 70 + Noctua u14s heatsink +75 + 3x noctua fans to replace case fans 60 = 1135 so for the measly sum of 160 extra dollars you can build a MUCH more powerful PC that is much quieter. The msi gpu is one of the quietest twin frozr is excellent the u14s noctua heatsink is actually quieter than water cooling and even surpasses the 120mm close loops and is about equal to the 240mm closed loops in performance. Since all the case fans are noctua and there is no hard drive the only noise you are going to hear is power supply noise and gpu noise and the power supply fan only kicks on when under heavy load, Such performance such silence. Sure the size is bigger but a micro atx tower isn't THAT bad and I'm not hurting for space.Laststop311 - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
1155 it equals forgot to update that valueBob Todd - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
1) In general I agree. I'd just build something much more powerful that was larger.2) Tiny builds have always had a significantly worse power/price ratio, so the "I'd just build X that is Y times the size" could be a template response to any of these SFF machines.
There is at least some back of the napkin math that shows these companies that there is enough of a market for these types of machines at these types of price points that they will be beneficial to their bottom line. Personally I think a cheap NUC form factor box with an A10-7800 @ 45W would be more interesting. Sure it could only do 720p gaming with low settings, but it could be comparatively cheap. But if I'm going to spend "desktop money" on one of these machines, I'd rather do a nice mITX build in a case with enough room for a full size graphics card. I guess that was a long winded way to say that your post was so obvious it doesn't add value...but that I agree.
SirPerro - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
"Small gaming PC" concept is stupidPeople looking for a gaming PC are not Apple fans willing to pay more for something stilish
Make this thing twice the size and it will be simply better.
dmacfour - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
I completely disagree.People looking for gaming PC's range from home builders to noobs that'll pay for a pre-built computers with flashy LED lights, windows, sparkly paint, and unnecessary aftermarket coolers.
They'll absolutely pay more for style. It's just a different kind of style.