Intel PPSTCK1A32WFC Bay Trail-T Compute Stick Review
by Ganesh T S on April 22, 2015 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Bay Trail
- HDMI Stick
Performance Metrics
The Intel PPSTCK1A32WFC ships with Windows 8.1 x86 because the driver support for the Atom SKUs belonging to Bay Trail-T is restricted to Windows 8.1 x 32 bit, and Android x 64 bit. This meant that many of the benchmarks in our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs could not be processed on the Compute Stick.
Futuremark PCMark 8
PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. Larger-sized systems that beat the Compute Stick in the benchmarks below usually have desktop or notebook-class Bay Trail SoCs. They are clocked higher and also have better thermal solutions.
Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks
In the other Futuremark benchmarks evaluating 3D performance, we find the Compute Stick coming in last - this was to be expected, given that the GPU is clocked low at 311 MHz and also happens to operate mostly in the thermal limits put in place for a tablet platform.
We now move on to look at the 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. The Compute Stick manages to score better than the ECS LIVA in most of these tests thanks to the four cores (compared to the two in the latter).
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. Again, the advantages of a quad-core SoC come through.
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. It is quite unlikely that any usage scenario for the Compute Stick is going to involve extensive encryption capabilities. However, the presence of AES-NI support in the Compute Stick's SoC piqued our interest.
TrueCrypt, a popular open-source disk encryption program can take advantage of AES-NI. Its 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 Intel PPSTCK1A32WFC and how it would compare with other select PCs. This is a purely CPU feature / clock speed based test. Interestingly, the Atom Z3735F is the only Bay Trail SoC in the graph below to have AES-NI capabilities.
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uzm - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
can it output 4K desktop? I'm looking for something that can drive an image slideshow on a 4K TV.zeo - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
Probably better off considering something like the Surface 3 with Cherry Trail, the new Gen 8 GPU is significantly better than Bay Trail's Gen 7 GPU and the display port should easily handle a 4K display better than most models with HDMI output...Bansaku - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I wonder if you could Hackintosh it?azazel1024 - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
I don't know how that can be considered an effective thermal solution. Maybe it is how tiny the chasis is. In my T100 with the z3740 (and plastic chasis, but obviously a larger chasis than the compute stick, but the compute stick has active cooling), I hit 1.83-1.86GHz and the CPU will stay pegged there under max load. I don't think I've ever monitored it for more than ~10 minutes, but running handbrake on it to test, it loaded all 4 cores at 95-99% and over the course of 10 minutes it never dropped the CPU frequency below that 1.83-1.86GHz range.The brief bit of testing (VERY brief) running some games (Kerbal space program actually) my T100 runs (after a minute or two to settle the thermals) the CPU at 1.33-1.6GHz generally and the GPU at around 450MHz or so with some brief bursts on both up towards 1.7GHz and 650MHz respectively.
Also 8w sounds like a LOT of power. Back to the whole KSP thing, I can get a little over 5 hours of battery life on my T100 running KSP, which is on a 31hwr battery, which equates to about 6 watts of average consumption under heavy CPU and GPU load (okay, probably not be as high as prime + furmark) for the ENTIRE platform, SoC, memory, screen, keyboard dock, etc. I'd be shocked if the SoC itself was drawing more than 4w.
ganeshts - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
For this chassis size, I will call the thermal solution effective since the CPU is running at the rated 1.3 GHz without throttling for more than 30 minutes, all the while maintaining the temperature below 85 C for the CPU package. The only time I would call a thermal solution ineffective is if it allows the CPU to reach junction temperature or makes the CPU run at less than rated speed.azazel1024 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I guess that is a point, but since it seems to throttle within just a couple of seconds back towards or to base clock, I think I'd call that thermal solution marginal. Does the processor melt down or throttle below base clock? No, but at the same time, the turbo core speeds seem close to worthless, because only occasionally would you ever see them.At least something that can manage to hit max turbo for 10-20s, you would likely see real benefits of that in a lot of light work loads, but here you'd only get to experience it for very, very brief periods of time (perhaps a webpage load, but you aren't going to see it in an application load even).
zodiacfml - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Pricey but its probably tested to run 24 7 on a display for ads....than cheaper intel windows tablets. Id reccomend this at my work.valnar - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
The WiFi speed is barely adequate, and that is only 20' away. Given the single radio, any issues whatsoever and video would hiccup. I think for about the same price or a little more, it would be safer to have a slightly bigger box. 'Something in the NUC range. After all, you aren't really saving that much space, and the thing still needs a power plug anyway.cen - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
It pisses me off to no end when Anandtech does not test Linux with these devices.CharonPDX - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Not a fail to me - just a very specific set of use cases.Micro HTPC (car-PC?)
"Always with you" desktop PC you can plug in to just about any TV (along with a micro Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo.)
Business "thin client" type PC.
Full-function Raspberry Pi replacement.