ZBOX Sphere OI520 Plus: Zotac's Take on the NUC
by Ganesh T S on August 1, 2014 8:50 AM 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.
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 i5-4200U in the ZBOX OI520 has AES-NI support. TrueCrypt is a popular open-source disk encryption program which 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 ZBOX OI520 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.
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Sushisamurai - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
It would almost seem like a 65W Kaveri would have been a better fit in this system... Especially considering local file playbackSushisamurai - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Oops, didn't notice this was a 15W watt part... Kaveri doesn't really fit then... Or does it ^_~BMNify - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
no amd soc meets these soc as AVX2 and Intel® Quick Sync Video are pretty much a base requirement in 2014/15 for high quality video playback and real time video capture/streaming.BMNify - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
OC saying that , even this dual core/quad thread intel soc doesn't really cut it for me, i cant even remember the last dual core anything i bought, even with intel in 2014/15 even if the OEM's are buying loads of intel soc for the next mobile/static blitz this holiday season , im not interested in buying as an end consumer unless its got quad core, and the said AVX2+ and Quick Sync...Assimilator87 - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
<blockquote>no amd soc meets these soc as AVX2 and Intel® Quick Sync Video are pretty much a base requirement in 2014/15 for high quality video playback and real time video capture/streaming.</blockquote>BMNify, I'm not arguing against your love for AVX2 and Quick Sync. On the other hand, you've overlooked some details. Haswell is not an SoC. That honor belongs to the Saltwell based chips. Also, both AMD and nVidia have equivalents to Quick Sync, being VCE and NVENC respectively.
xdrol - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
Mobile Haswell _is_ an SoC.But AVX2 as base requirement? lol.. there are practically no programs for AVX2 because Intel decided to leave it out 70+% of all sold devices (Celerons, Pentiums). And QuickSync as "high quiality"? Have you even seen what blurry shit it makes?
emn13 - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link
That's just nonsense. You certainly don't need quicksync for even high-end video playback - a single CPU tends to be enough (and you've got more than one, right?). I suspect AMD has a "iGPU" accelerated playback mode too. Though again, you don't need it (and the quality of quicksync is inferior to that of software decoders/encoders).AVX2 is neat, but similar truly not a requirement.
I recently got smoothvideo to run... smoothly on an ancient Q6600 with an ancient 9600GT card. I would certainly recommend more, but note: you really don't need quicksync.
Flunk - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Gigabyte build a Brix based on AMD's last-gen Richland core. Now that a 45watt Kaveri chip is available they may decide to build one with that.For perspective the i7-4770R in the Brix Pro, which is both larger and runs hot is a 65watt chip so I can't see zotac fitting it in here.
nathanddrews - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
I was going to say "wait for Carrizo", but that will likely be a 28nm part (at this rate), so I don't think they'll get their power/heat issues resolved. I like these little systems, but they are all just too weak in GPU power to justify moving away from my current setups.Sushisamurai - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Yeah, little systems attract me too. But I agree with subpar GPU performance. I still remember my netbook struggling to run a 1080p mkv file... *sighs*