ASRock DeskMini Z370 GTX1060 Review: A Compact Coffee Lake Gaming PC

GPU Performance for Workstation Workloads - SPECviewperf 13

The SPECviewperf benchmark from SPEC provides an idea of the capabilities of the GPU in a workstation from the perspective of different CAD, content creation, and visual data analysis tools. It makes more sense to process these benchmarks on workstations with professional GPUs, but, consumer GPUs are often the choice for machines that need to handle both gaming and professional workloads.

SPECviewperf 13 includes nine different workloads representative of graphics content and behavior of actual applications. They make use of the OpenGL 4.0 and DirectX 12 APIs under Windows. SPECviewperf 13's workloads (termed viewsets) can officially be run only at two desktop resolutions (1920 x 1080, and 3840 x 2160), and need the dsplay scaling to be set to 100% (DPI of 96). The available viewsets are listed below.

• 3ds Max (3dsmax-06)
• CATIA (catia-05)
• Creo (creo-02)
• Energy (energy-02)
• Maya (maya-05)
• Medical (medical-02)
• Showcase (showcase-02)
• Siemens NX (snx-03)
• Solidworks (sw-04)

The 3ds Max and Showcase viewsets are available only when processing at 1920 x 1080. The rest are available at both resolutions.

We processed SPECviewperf 13 at both resolutions on the ASRock DeskMini Z370 GTX1060. The benchmark measures the frame rate at which the GPU renders the scenes in a viewset. Each viewset is composed of different scenes and rendering modes, and the composite score for the viewset is a weighted geometric mean of the FPS measured for the different scenes. In this section, we take a look at how its composite scores stack up against other systems targeting this market segment.

3ds Max (3dsmax-06)

The 3dsmax-06 viewset comprises of 11 different scenes. They have been created from traces of the graphics workload generated by Autodesk 3ds Max 2016 using the default Nitrous DX11 driver. Additional details are available here.

CATIA (catia-05)

The catia-05 viewset comprises of 14 different tests created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the CATIA V6 R2012 application from Dassault Systemes. Additional details are available here.

The CATIA workload appears to have good performance with the Radeon GPU, though we have to test across more systems to confirm this. Otherwise, the results are along expected lines with the systems with the GTX 1080 outperforming the DeskMini Z370 with the GTX 1060.

Creo (creo-02)

The creo-02 viewset comprises of 16 different tests created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the Creo 3 and Creo 4 applications from PTC. Additional details are available here.

The Hades Canyon NUC was unable to complete this benchmark successfully at 3840 x 2160, and seems to perform poorly even at 1920 x 1080, but, otherwise, the results are as expected.

Energy (energy-02)

The energy-02 viewset comprises of 6 different tests based on techniques used by the OpendTect seismic visualization application. Additional details are available here.

The Skull Canyon NUC was unable to complete processing this benchmark at either resolution, and the Hades Canyon NUC failed at 3840 x 2160, but, the results are as expected otherwise.

Maya (maya-05)

The maya-05 viewset comprises of 10 different tests based on traces of the graphics workload generated by Autodesk Maya 2017. Additional details are available here.

Medical (medical-02)

The medical-02 viewset comprises of 8 different tests derived from 4 distinct datasets. Each test uses the ImageVis3D volume visualization program's Tuvok rendering core for 2D projections of 3D volumetric grids. Additional details are available here.

Showcase (showcase-02)

The showcase-02 viewset comprises of 4 tests created from traces of the Autodesk Showcase 2013 application rendering a racecar model with 8 million vertices using different modes. Additional details are available here.

Siemens NX (snx-03)

The snx-03 viewset comprises of 10 tests created with traces from the graphics workload generated by the NX 8.0 application from Siemens PLM. Additional details are available here.

The Siemens NX workload appears to have very good performance with the Radeon GPU, though we have to test across more systems to confirm this. Otherwise, the results are along expected lines with the systems with the GTX 1080 outperforming the DeskMini Z370 with the GTX 1060.

Solidworks (sw-04)

The sw-04 viewset comprises of 11 tests created from traces of Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 2013 SP1 application. Additional details are available here.

Overall, we find the DeskMini Z370 GTX1060 come in the middle of the pack with respect to the performance in the SPECviewperf 13 workloads. This is as expected, with the PCs equipped with the GTX 1080 providing more graphics horsepower for the tasks.