GIGABYTE BRIX GB-BXBT-1900 Review: A Bay Trail UCFF PC
by Ganesh T S on October 24, 2014 12:10 PM 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. This is simply a test of CPU performance. As expected, the Celeron J1900 with active cooling performs about twice as better as the passively cooled LIVA, but can't match the Haswell CPUs in the other mini-PCs.
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. The presence of four distinct cores helps the unit move to the middle of the pack in the decompression ratings.
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 Silvermont, even the lowly Atom series has gained support for AES-NI in some SKUs. Unfortunately, AES-NI is not a feature available in Bay Trail-D. AES operations have to be done in software. TrueCrypt, a popular open-source disk encryption program can take advantage of the AES-NI capabilities, but fall back to a software implementation in the absence of AES-NI. 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 GIGABYTE GB-BXBT-1900 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. This is again a test of the CPU capabilities, and the trend seen in earlier CPU-focused workload graphs are evident here also.
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nathanddrews - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
A dual-NIC version of this would make an incredible pfSense router.The_Assimilator - Saturday, October 25, 2014 - link
I had the exact same thought. I hope Gigabyte reads these comments and decides to produce such a device.abufrejoval - Sunday, October 26, 2014 - link
The GIGABYTE GA-J1900N-D3V (recently reviewed here) has those two ports and would fit that niche as well. There is also lots of USB Ethernet adapters out there, which at 100Mbit/USB 2.0 might be good enough for your uplink and there is also Gbit/USB 3.0 variants which may be a little trickier in terms of device drivers.artk2219 - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
I just wanted to post this here. Dualcore sandy bridge cpu, m-itx, m-pcie, it can run a laptop display, msata, runs off a 19v powersupply from a dell or hp, and uses sodimms in case you have any laptop memory around. For 52 dollars.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
bliq00 - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
how does that run a laptop display?jdav - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
LVDS monitor ribbon interface in the corner by the mSATA interface. Most laptop displays use this format to connect to the motherboard. The white 8-pin header to the left of that I believe is for the display power.Jambe - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
So this variant (with the J1900) will never come to NA?:(
alhopper - Saturday, October 25, 2014 - link
What's the point of this review if the product cannot be purchased?OrphanageExplosion - Saturday, October 25, 2014 - link
Because Anandtech does have readers outside of North America?Tikcus9666 - Saturday, October 25, 2014 - link
Because the world is much much bigger than the USA