ASRock Beebox-S 7200U Kaby Lake UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on February 7, 2017 8:00 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. This is simply a test of CPU performance. As expected, the Core i5-based Beebox-S 7200U can't match the performance of the Core i7-based UCFF PCs such as the Cubi 2 or the Skylake BRIX.
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 have hardware acceleration for the encryption and decryption processes. The Core i5-7200U in the Beebox-S 7200U does have AES-NI support. TrueCrypt, a popular open-source disk encryption program 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 ASRock Beebox-S 7200U 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, with the Beebox-S 7200U only outclassed by the Skylake BRIX in our list of UCFF PCs.
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fanofanand - Thursday, February 9, 2017 - link
Your logic is sound, but most failures don't occur within the warranty period. Sometimes it seems they set the warranty period based on failure rates during QA testing. If they have a 50% failure rate on year 4 they just make sure the warranty is 3 years (oversimplified and inaccurate figures but that's the gist of it). Auto manufacturers have been doing this for decades, there was a reason most powertrain warranties went to 50,000 miles but massive head gasket failures or transmission failures would occur at 60k (I experienced both with GM products which is why they won't be getting any more of my hard earned money).OzzyLogic - Monday, February 20, 2017 - link
It's like you took the words out of my mouth, i really dislike fanned systems because of the dust build up that you will eventually get. No matter what you do, dust will always find its way into your system somehow. Also one of the reasons why i bought my self one of these. https://www.logicsupply.com/eu-en/ml100g-50/thesloth - Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - link
I probably just need to RTFA properly, but I don't see any graphics or mention of noise (dB). For a HTPC I would have thought that relevant.Sene - Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - link
Why don't you test the GPU with MadVR. Even if it has limited power it would be interesting to know the best settings it can supportDavid_K - Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - link
From my testing with a 7700K and its build in HD 630, madVR is just too heavy for the gpu, on 4K videos it becomes a stutterfest.Samus - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
Same experience on my i5-7600k with HD630...only reason I bothered trying was because my 1070 took a week longer to arrive than the rest of the parts. I wasn't optimistic going in but figured I'd see what Intel GPU's can do since I haven't really toyed with one since my 4th gen Haswell laptop.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
I'm still incredibly dissapointed in intel's lack of improvements in the iGPU race. HD 630 is onyl, on average, 2FPS faster in games then the hd 4600 from haswell.three years and a whole 2FPS, mostly thanks to a better memory controller. Why cant intel start offering more chips with iris graphics?
Raven ridge cant get here soon enough.
BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
I haven't really looked into iGPU performance improvements at all since Ivy Bridge's HD 4000. Is that really all we've gained in the past few years out of non-Iris Intel graphics? They've got to be hitting some kind of shared system memory bottleneck that makes it a difficult prospect to wring more out of their iGPUs. Though that doesn't explain the A-series GPUs being fairly quick despite lacking any sort of additional memory bandwidth.nathanddrews - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
There's not much to look into unless you play mostly older games. People are creative and I've seen playable frame rates on non-Iris IGP newer games, but it usually involves 720p resolution and minimal settings or INI hacks to disable engine features. Even the most powerful Intel IGP (Iris Pro) chokes on games like Doom (2016) and Tomb Raider (latest). Context is everything.https://youtu.be/LV8Msa-Pxl8
BrokenCrayons - Thursday, February 9, 2017 - link
Thanks for the response. I'd gotten a vague sense that Intel wasn't really leaping ahead with iGPU performance by the fact that the company's announcements stressed additional features as opposed to "x-times more performance" or "y-percent faster than last gen graphics" but I didn't realize things have gotten so stagnant recently. The fact that Iris exists sort of glosses over and distracts from the much more common eDRAM-less iGPU performance.*rant disclaimer* Iris has really done a lot of damage to the GPU market in general. By raising the bar of iGPU performance to the point where lower end discrete cards are rivaled by Iris parts, Intel's effectively eliminated the low end discrete GPU segment altoghether. At the same time, Iris is an uncommon thing so while the performance exists, it's not available for purchase and there aren't GPUs available to fill the gap between the iGPUs you can actually buy and the bottom end of the current discrete GPU product stack. Thanks for that crap Intel. Thanks a lot for sticking us with the choice of a 75W TDP discrete card or an anemic iGPU that hasn't gotten faster in years.