GIGABYTE BRIX GB-BXBT-1900 Review: A Bay Trail UCFF PC
by Ganesh T S on October 24, 2014 12:10 PM ESTNetworking & Storage Performance
We have recently started devoting a separate section to analyze the storage and networking credentials of the units under review. On the storage side, one option would be repetition of our strenuous SSD review tests on the drive(s) in the PC. Fortunately, to avoid that overkill, PCMark 8 has a storage bench where certain common workloads such as loading games and document processing are replayed on the target drive. Results are presented in two forms, one being a benchmark number and the other, a bandwidth figure. We ran the PCMark 8 storage bench on selected PCs and the results are presented below.
The Samsung SSD 840 EVO is the same model that was used in the BRIX Pro. While there is not much to separate them in the storage subsystem score, there is quite a bit of difference in the storage bandwidth. Since the storage bandwidth workloads are real-world traces, it makes sense that the CPU can act as a bottleneck. This is the reason why we have a gap of more than 60 MBps between the two systems. Effectively speaking, pairing the Samsung SSD 840 EVO with a Celeron J1900 system will not expose the full benefits of the SSD in real-world situations. It goes without saying that the SSD does make the system more responsive by removing disk I/O bottlenecks compared to hard drives (such as the one used in the ZBOX OI520 PLUS).
On the networking side, we restricted ourselves to the evaluation of the WLAN component. Our standard test router is the Netgear R7000 Nighthawk configured with both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks. The router is placed approximately 20 ft. away, separated by a drywall (as in a typical US building). A wired client (Zotac ID89-Plus) is connected to the R7000 and serves as one endpoint for iPerf evaluation. The PC under test is made to connect to either the 5 GHz (preferred) or 2.4 GHz SSID and iPerf tests are conducted for both TCP and UDP transfers. It is ensured that the PC under test is the only wireless client for the Netgear R7000. We evaluate total throughput for up to 32 simultaneous TCP connections using iPerf and present the highest number in the graph below.
In the UDP case, we try to transfer data at the highest rate possible for which we get less than 1% packet loss.
The BXBT-1900 uses the same Realtek RTL8723BE 1x1:1 802.11n / BT combo that we saw in the BXi7-4500 earlier this month. The slight differences in the throughput numbers above can be attributed to antenna placement. In any case, a single stream 802.11n card is the bare minimum that today's PCs can ship with. Given the low price target for this Bay Trail system, we believe GIGABYTE can be excused for bundling such a card.
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nathanddrews - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Size doesn't matter.vailr - Saturday, October 25, 2014 - link
This review is too scatterbrained. The reviewer says "Intel HD Graphics" but doesn't specify which version; "not being sold in the North American market", yet also says: "a US power cord".Wut? Anand is seeing his old web site go down the drain.
nickb64 - Sunday, October 26, 2014 - link
"Intel HD Graphics" is exactly what Intel calls it. No number or anything.http://ark.intel.com/products/78867/Intel-Celeron-...
sjprg2 - Saturday, October 25, 2014 - link
Why would any company make the SSD controller a SATA 2 instead of a SATA 3?also a 5 GHZ wireless would make this a great remote backup.
abufrejoval - Sunday, October 26, 2014 - link
You'd need to ask Intel that: This is a system on chip or SoC and SATA comes off that chip.Intel might say that SATA 2 saves power and that might even be true. More likely they are just afraid they'll sell less mainline CPUs and chipsets if these SoC were too powerful.
In practice I find the difference only important on jobs I wouldn't want to do on this system anyway.
The wireless card isn't soldered on: In theory you could get another card that supports 5GHz for minimal bucks.
nothing immortal - Sunday, October 26, 2014 - link
No kabini result? i want to see this cheap amd chip compared with this expensive intel box. Really, it should be there.abufrejoval - Sunday, October 26, 2014 - link
As much as I love the BRIX in terms of form factor, case look and sturdyness etc. I could never quite fathom their choice of notebook type active cooling systems, especially since they are full metal cases (top cover also has metal under a cover which is plastic for "looks").Well of course these notebook fans are cheap, being mass produced in incredible numbers, but they get far too noisy under load. I tried a 15Watt Haswell BRIX and had to return it heartbroken: I loved the little box, but I couldn't stand the constant fan speed changes, which gave me far too much feedback on just how hard the CPU was working.
I run the GIGABYTE GA-J1900N-D3V which is completely passive and I thus know it's possible to design a passive box in the BRIX form factor.
And if by all means they need to share a fan design with the bigger boxes, why can't they put a bigger one in, say something Noctua, which never more than whispers?
Although one of the biggest attractions of these BayTrails is that you can design systems all passive which just run forever somewhere in a corner completely silent and sealed with no chance of choking on dust.
BTW: I'm glad you finally measured clock speeds and power consumption! Yes, the J1900 (and the J1800 likewise) *never* run at anything but turbo clocks under load. The "official" clock rates are simply bogus numbers, perhaps designed to keep people away from these SoCs or to "manage performance expectations": With Intel everything is possible.
Idle power clearly speaks for the BRIX and the integrated power supply, which is probably a far better match than the Pico-PSU and external 12V brick that I am using on the GIGABYTE GA-J1900N-D3V, which gives me 10/28 Watts on idle/full load.
BTW: I've never noticed that a single DRAM channel limited the BayTrail SoCs in any way: Most likely that's because they only ever have a single channel DRAM interface anyway.
And for Core 2 comparisons: I didn't run too many benchmarks but the J1900 at 2.41 GHz matched 80% of my QX9100 @ 2.40 GHz on all pure CPU benchmarks I tried (POVray and Cinebench R15 raytracing) at 28 vs. 65 Watts.
If they managed to make this completely passive and silent this would be the perfect desktop. It runs pretty much every x86 OS right out the box with decent but not awe inspiring performance at 1920x1200 or below. Video at least on Windows with is great with all that hardware support from an Intel HD VPU including QuickSync and 3D is limited only by speed not by feature availability, which often enough is all you want (e.g. Compiz 3D effects on Linux).
Can't expect gaming performance from a system costing less and using less power than an entry level grapics card.
chizow - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
@Ganesh T S: did you get a chance to test this with WMC? Specifically, high bitrate CableCard streams where you change the resolution from windowed to fullscreen or portrait/landscape. My Asus T100 wasn't able to handle this well at all so I ultimately stopped using it as a WMC device and finally sold it. It would hang for up to 60 minutes changing context/resolution and I could never figure out if it was the slow eMMC storage, the GPU, single-channel RAM or what.I wanted to get a Celeron NUC for an HTPC but ultimately this scared me off and I went with the i3 NUC instead, which cost more than 2x as much.
zlandar - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
I know Celeron is just a name but every time I've used Intel chips below i3 the performance sucks.Rather pay the price premium for an i3 than risk being unhappy with a stuttering NUC.
The comparison with other NUCs seem way off as you mostly compared it against i5/i7 systems and no i3. It's like stacking a HTPC video card against a mid to high range gaming video card.
leonhk1 - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link
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