Category: AMLogic

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on Black Friday 2015 – International Deals

Black Friday 2015 – International Deals

While Black Friday is very much a US tradition, Chinese online retailers have made an habit to launch Black Friday, and to a lesser extend Cyber Monday, promotions discount on their sites bringing the event to an international audience. This year is no different, and have gathered some promotions that may be of interest to CNX Software readers. DealExtreme I have not found specific deals on DealExtreme, but the company launched a Black Friday 2015 Lucky Draw event where you can get partial or full refunds of existing orders, as well as coupons for future order. Here are the rules: This campaign is for all DX customers. Please log in first. One play per valid order number. Valid Orders must meet the following three conditions: Orders made on or after 10:00:00(AM) Oct. 28th and before 9:59:59(AM) Nov. 26th, 2015 (UTC+8). Order should include one or more MVP product(s) and the […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 130 Comments on How to Update Firmware on Amlogic S905 TV Boxes

How to Update Firmware on Amlogic S905 TV Boxes

Videostrong has just sent me a new firmware for K1 Plus mini PC based on Amlogic S905 processor. The procedure is basically the same as for previous Amlogic devices, but I’ve still documented the step to follow an update. Please note that devices from decent brands should have OTA updates implemented, so it may not be needed, except for the cheapest devices, or in case of network issues. The firmware update procedure below can be done in any computer, including the Android TV box itself. The firmware is specific to K1 Plus, so if you have another TV box, you’ll need to change the download link to the firmware for your device. Download the firmware file (e.g. K1 Plus 2015-11-23.rar) Extract the compressed file to the root of a micro SD card, or on any other external storage. You should have a few files as shown above, including a zip […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments on MINI MX 4K Android Media Player Unboxing and Teardown

MINI MX 4K Android Media Player Unboxing and Teardown

I received my first Amlogic S905 TV box last week with K1 Plus, and although I have not reviewed it yet due to some issues with Google Play, I’ve run some benchmarks on the Amlogic S905 platform, which some people mentioning that results could have been impacted by the small heatsink leading to CPU throttling. The good news is that I know have a new Amlogic SD905 TV Box to play with as GearBest sent me Beelink MINI MX TV box. Today, I’ll take a few photos of the device and the board, before hopefully publishing the full review early next week. Beelink MINI MX Unboxing I received the package via DHL, and thanks to its low price I did not have to pay custom duties or VAT. The package does not show any specific brand, only Mini MX 4K Movies products, as well as the specifications on the back. […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Amlogic S912 Processor Could Feature an ARM Mali-T830 GPU

Amlogic S912 Processor Could Feature an ARM Mali-T830 GPU

Amlogic S912 launch has been delayed by a few months, and if we are to believe the data from GFXBench (test 1; test 2), the reason could be that they switched the design from a Mali-T7xx GPU to a more powerful Mali-T830 GPU. S912 processor is still based on four Cortex A53 core @ up to 2.0 GHz like in S905, but the GPU will be much more powerful. One person noticed these results and wrote an analysis and comparison (in Korean) against the Mali-860MP2 GPU found in Mediatek MT6755 SoC (Helio P10) SoC.  Offscreen  Manhattan 3.1  Manhattan  T-Rex  ALU  ALU2  Fillrate  Texturing  MT6755  4.8  7.2  17.2  6.0  1012  S912  4.4  7.0  16.3  34.7  5.3  1283  1000 So while Mali-860MP2 is faster for all listed benchmark the advantage is not that great. His analysis  compared benchmarks (read post for details) concludes that the GPU in S912 could be clocked at […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments on Amlogic S805 vs S905 Benchmarks Comparison

Amlogic S805 vs S905 Benchmarks Comparison

After publishing a benchmark comparison between Amlogic S905 and Rockchip RK3368 yesterday, I was asked to do the same with Amlogic S805 and Amlogic S905. Since I already had the data, I just went ahead to write this post. Bear in mind that Amlogic S805 TV boxes run Android 4.4, while Amlogic S905 devices all feature Android 5.1. So while the table below should give a good estimate of the actual performance improvement between the two generation devices, Amlogic S905 performance will be amplified thanks to optimizations in Android 5.1, for instance the use of ART runtime instead of Dalvik. With that in mind here are the results comparing the results I got with Videostrong K1 Plus (Amlogic S905) and MXQ S85 (Amlogic S805) TV boxes. Amlogic S905 Amlogic S805 Ratio CPU Quad core Cortex A53 @ 2.02 GHz Quad core Cortex A5 @ 1.488 GHz GPU ARM Mali-450MP ARM […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments on Amlogic S905 vs Rockchip RK3368 Benchmarks Comparison

Amlogic S905 vs Rockchip RK3368 Benchmarks Comparison

The first Amlogic S905 TV boxes have started to ship,  and I received Videostrong K1 Plus a few days ago, but due to some issues with Google Play Store, I’ve decided to postpone the review. In the meantime, I’ve side-loaded popular benchmark apps including Antutu, Vellamo, and 3Dmarks to the device to compare it to its main 64-bit ARM competitor: Rockchip RK3368. I used benchmark results from Beelink i68 review and compared them to K1 Plus, both devices running Android 5.1. A ratio greater than 1 (green) mean S905 is better, while a ratio lower than 1 (red) means RK3368 fares better. Amlogic S905 Rockchip RK3368 Ratio CPU Quad core Cortex A53 @ 2.02 GHz* Octa core Cortex A53 @ 1.2GHz GPU ARM Mali-450MP PowerVR G6110 Antutu 5.x Overall 28,027 34,171 0.82 Multitask 4,260 4,041 1.05 Runtime 2,721 2,949 0.92 RAM Ops 1,960 2,346 0.84 RAM Speed 2,420 2,601 0.93 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 50 Comments on Amlogic S905 Source Code Published – Linux, U-Boot, Mali-450 GPU and Other Drivers

Amlogic S905 Source Code Published – Linux, U-Boot, Mali-450 GPU and Other Drivers

Amlogic has an open linux website where they regurlarly release GPL source code, and with Amlogic S905 devices coming to market, they’ve released a few tarballs at the beginning of the month including Linux 3.14 source code, U-boot source code, and Mali-450MP GPU kernel source code (obviously not userspace), as well as some other drivers for WiFi, NAND flash, PMU, TVIN, etc… Let’s get to the download links: Linux 3.14.29 source code U-boot 2015.01 GPU drivers for ARM Mali-450MP Broadcom and Realtek Wifi drivers and firmware (November 4, 2015) can be found @ http://openlinux.amlogic.com:8000/download/ARM/wifi/. Other kernel modules (November 4, 2015) @ http://openlinux.amlogic.com:8000/download/ARM/modules/. I quickly tried to build the Linux source. If you’ve never build a 64-bit ARM kernel or app before, you’ll fist need to install the toolchain. I installed the one provided with Ubuntu 14.04:

Now extract the tarball and enter the source directory:

At first I […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 38 Comments on Videostrong K1 Plus Amlogic S905 Android TV Box Unboxing and Teardown

Videostrong K1 Plus Amlogic S905 Android TV Box Unboxing and Teardown

Many Amlogic S905 TV boxes have been announced, and thanks to Videostrong, I’ve received my first Amlogic S905 device for review with their K1 Plus media player (aka KI Plus). Today, I’ll start by listing the specifications, before taking a few pictures of the device and its board. with the full review following up in a few days. Videostrong K1 Plus Specifications K1 Plus is one of the entry level models with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage by default: SoC –  Amlogic S905 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0GHz with  penta-core Mali-450MP GPU @ 750 MHz System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB NAND flash (4 to 32GB optional) + micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60Hz with HDCP 2.2 support, and 3.5mm AV jack Audio – HDMI, AV (stereo), optical S/PDIF Video Codecs – 10-bit H.265 up to 4K60, […]