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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watzupken - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
Looking at the performance as a whole, it is nowhere near impressive. But if you consider the price of this, there is not much to complain to be honest. I am looking forward to something like this with the new Cherry Trail chip to use as my HTPC.mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Are there any interoperability issues with BT and WIFI? I'm asking because I have a Tronsmart 4-core stick (actually 2) and when I am connected to 2.4GHz Wifi and use a BT mouse, I cannot watch anything. I noticed this first with HBO go, where using a BT mouse would result in not playing. but even in play store I had lots of "retry" messages.Then I saw this about a Hanspree clone: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RQORH45TGR8KU/ref=c...
"The WiFi and Bluetooth can get a bit flaky if used together. Using one causes the other to slow down or drop out completely. I've got a USB network adapter attached so I can use a bluetooth controller. Those wanting to use this as a steam machine might want to either do the same, or use a wireless 360 controller with its adapter to avoid using the bluetooth and WiFi together."
This led me to the conclusion that 1x1 2.4GHz radio cannot work reliably with BT and Wifi.
mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Strange to reply to my own mail.But I've seen some posts about people realizing a slower Wifi connection when BT is active (even about Apple devices).
So maybe this stick does has a stable connection, but the wifi performance is degraded by Bluetooth activity.
So please, please, tell us how you tested (BT mouse+KB ?) and also report the other way. This is really important for this class of devices.
ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I got curious and tested out by disabling Bluetooth completely. Peak TCP Wi-Fi performance with our test router gave around 15 Mbps in the same physical setting. A slight improvement, but I suspect the BT interference is not that bad in the Compute Stick.mathew7 - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
Actually, in my experience, it's the BT transfer that's problematic. As in: if I click on something and don't move the mouse, it works correctly, but if I keep moving the mouse, cursor is jerky and network problems appear.So you tested with BT completely off....it is a good info. But did you also move the BT mouse while testing?
SilverBlade - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Saying that the absence of HD audio bitstreaming will not bother too many consumers is flat out entirely false.Any HTPC MUST have the ability to bitstream HD audio. It is a 100% REQUIRED and ESSENTIAL ability.
Why bother having an HTPC that can only output DVD quality? Makes zero sense. May as well get a proper blu-ray player or a media player from 5 years ago that is quite capable of bitstreaming HD audio.
It is a complete and utter fail.
Sorry, Intel screwed this up. This is entirely, 100% useless to me until they give it the ability to bitstream HD audio.
mathew7 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
So I guess you don't travel and use the hotel's (maybe) stereo TV, where HD audio is impossible.To listen to HD audio you already need a serious 5.1 (or more) receiver, which means size does not really matter and most likely you already have a BD player. So go buy the NUC.
Also videos with HD audio tracks need so much storage that the compactness of this device is useless , as it can't power directly a 2.5"HDD or BD reader, which means you need an additional power brick. This is before I get to the single USB port.
ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Having HD audio bitstream would be nice, but, if you are having an AVR capable of bitstreaming I strongly suggest you spend a little more and get a NUC or some other 'capable' HTPC for playback purposes.Anyways, Netflix DD+ bitstreaming works.
Tranzaction77 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
The Netbook of Compute Sticks.damianrobertjones - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
"32 GB, simply put, is just not enough after Windows installs a couple of updates."Although I do agree there are other options. Remove the recovery partition, disable virtual memory, disable hibernation etc to grab back all of the space. Also after installing updates run disk cleanup to recover even more space taken by the updates.
Not sure why this is never mentioned.