benchmark

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 36 Comments on Intel Apollo Lake Windows 10 Benchmarks Before and After Meltdown & Spectre Security Update

Intel Apollo Lake Windows 10 Benchmarks Before and After Meltdown & Spectre Security Update

So this week, there’s been a fair amount of news about Meltdown & Spectre exploits, which affects all major processor vendors one way or another, but especially Intel, and whose mitigations require operating systems and in some case microcode updates that decrease performance for some specific tasks. Microsoft has now pushed an update for Windows 10, and since I’m reviewing MINIX NEO N42C-4 mini PC powered by an Intel Pentium N4200 “Apollo Lake” processor, and just happened to run benchmarks before the update, so I decided to run some of the benchmarks again to see if there was any significant difference before and after the security update. First I had to verify I had indeed received the update in the “installed update history”, and Windows 10 Pro was updated on January 5th with KB4056892, which is what we want, so let’s go ahead. Benchmarks before Update PCMark 10 is one […]

Posted on by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 25 Comments on Zotac ZBOX PI225 Review – SSD-Like Mini PC Tested with Windows 10 & Ubuntu

Zotac ZBOX PI225 Review – SSD-Like Mini PC Tested with Windows 10 & Ubuntu

What makes the Zotac ZBOX PI225 so interesting is that this is the first true ‘card’ form-factor mini PC. It is a mini PC that looks like a SSD. Whilst Intel replaced the ‘stick’ form-factor with a similar ‘card’ form-factor for their next generation mini PCs they also required a ‘dock’ in order to use them. The difference with the PI225 however is that it actually is a standalone mini PC and includes all the necessary input/output ports. Intrigued by this new form-factor I decided to purchase one and the following is my review of its performance and capabilities. The Zotac ZBOX PI225 is a fanless device which features an Apollo Lake N3350 SoC with 32GB of storage pre-installed with Windows 10 Home, 4GB RAM, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, two USB Type-C ports, a micro SD card reader and a power connector. Importantly it comes with all the accessories you […]

Posted on by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 13 Comments on Azulle Byte3 Mini PC Review – Windows 10, Linux Support, Benchmarks, and Video Playback

Azulle Byte3 Mini PC Review – Windows 10, Linux Support, Benchmarks, and Video Playback

Azulle Byte3

The Azulle Byte3 is a fanless Apollo Lake device featuring both M.2 slot and a SATA connector, as well as supporting HDMI and VGA. It includes USB (both 2.0 and 3.0 including a Type-C port) as well as Gigabit Ethernet:   It features an Apollo Lake N3450 SoC and comes with 32GB of storage plus an option of either 4GB or 8GB of RAM and a further option of either with or without Windows 10 Pro meaning Linux users can save around USD 20. Azulle provided me with a device for review and it came in a presentation box complete with a power adapter, and remote control together with a quick guide pamphlet. Whilst the power adapter includes an interchangeable plug it only came with one suitable for the US. Looking at the detail specifications:     it is important to realize that the Type-C USB is USB 3.0 which […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 57 Comments on Amlogic S905X vs Rockchip RK3328 vs Allwinner H6 Processors – Benchmarks & Features Comparison

Amlogic S905X vs Rockchip RK3328 vs Allwinner H6 Processors – Benchmarks & Features Comparison

Amlogic S905X vs Rockchip RK3328 vs Allwinner H6

Rockchip, Amlogic, and Allwinner are all battling for the lower and mid-range segments of the TV box market, so it may be interesting to compare their solutions. We won’t look into the ultra low-end market with 32-bit ARM Cortex A7 processor, but instead compare some of the recent quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 processor for 4K HDR TV box from the company with respectively Amlogic S905X, Rockchip RK3328, and Allwinner H6 SoCs. We’ll compare some of the benchmarks obtained with Android TV boxes, as well as other features like video support, USB, and Ethernet interfaces. S905X vs RK3328 vs H6 Benchmarks Let’s start with results for popular Android benchmarks: Antutu 6.x, Vellamo 3.x, and 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme v1.2 with results obtained from 3 TV boxes: Mini M8S II (Amlogic S905X), A95X R2 (Rockchip RK3328), and Zidoo H6 Pro (Allwinner H6). A score is highlighted in green is there’s a […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments on Xiaomi Mi A1 Smartphone Review – Part 2: Android 7.1.2 Firmware

Xiaomi Mi A1 Smartphone Review – Part 2: Android 7.1.2 Firmware

Google recently announced several Android One smartphones, which are supposed to get 2 years of firmware updates, including to the latest version of Android, such as HTC U11 Life and Android One Moto X4. Many of those phones are limited to some specific countries, but Xiaomi Mi A1 will be launched in over 40 countries, and thanks to Chinese online shops is really available worldwide. GearBest sent me the latter last month, and in the first part of Xiaomi Mi A1 review I simply went through unboxing, booted the phone, perform an OTA update, and ran Antutu 6.x on the phone for a quick estimate of performance. Since then, I’ve had around four weeks to play with the smartphone running Android 7.1.2 (still), so I’m ready to report my experience in the second part of the review. General Impressions In the past year, I used Vernee Apollo Lite smartphone powered […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments on First OpenCL Encounters on Cortex-A72: Some Benchmarking

First OpenCL Encounters on Cortex-A72: Some Benchmarking

This is a guest post by blu about his experience with OpenCL on MacchiatoBin board with a quad core Cortex A72 processor and an Intel based MacBook. He previously contributed several technical articles such as How ARM Nerfed NEON Permute Instructions in ARMv8 or OpenGL ES development on Ubuntu Touch. Qualcomm launched their long-awaited server ARM chip the other day, and we started getting the first benchmarks. Incidentally, I too managed to get some OpenCL ray-tracing code running on an ARM Cortex-A72 machine that same day (thanks to pocl – an LLVM-based open-source OCL multi-platform implementation), so my benchmarking curiosity got me. The code in question is an OCL (half-finished) port of a graphics demo from 2014. Some remarks of what it does: For each frame: a single thread builds a sparse voxel octree from a dynamic voxel scene; the octree, along with current camera settings are passed to an […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on Zidoo H6 Pro (Allwinner H6) TV Box Review – Part 2: Android 7.0 Firmware

Zidoo H6 Pro (Allwinner H6) TV Box Review – Part 2: Android 7.0 Firmware

Zidoo H6 Pro is the very first Allwinner H6 based 4K TV box. The Android 7.0 device support H.265, H.264 and VP6 4K video decoding, comes with fast interfaces such as USB 3.0, and network connectivity with Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11ac WiFi. I’ve already checkout the hardware in the first part of the review entitled “Zidoo H6 Pro (Allwinner H6) TV Box Review – Part 1: Unboxing & Teardown“, and since then, I’ve had time to play with the TV box, and report my experience with Android 7.0 in this second part of the review. First Boot and OTA Firmware Update I’ve connected a USB keyboard and a USB dongle with RF dongles for an air mouse and gamepad on the two USB ports, a USB 3.0 hard drive to the single USB 3.0 ports, as well as HDMI and Ethernet cables before powering up the TV box. I also […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on Qualcomm Centriq 2400 ARM SoC Launched for Datacenters, Benchmarked against Intel Xeon SoCs

Qualcomm Centriq 2400 ARM SoC Launched for Datacenters, Benchmarked against Intel Xeon SoCs

Qualcomm Centriq 2400 ARM Server-on-Chip has been four years in the making. The company announced sampling in Q4 2016 using 10nm FinFET process technology with the SoC featuring up to 48 Qualcomm Falkor ARMv8 CPU cores optimized for datacenter workloads. More recently, Qualcomm provided a few more details about the Falkor core, fully customized with a 64-bit only micro-architecture based on ARMv8 / Aarch64. Finally, here it is as the SoC formally launched with the company announcing commercial shipments of Centriq 2400 SoCs. Qualcom Centriq 2400 key features and specifications: CPU – Up to 48 physical ARMv8 compliant 64-bit only Falkor cores @ 2.2 GHz (base frequency) / 2.6 GHz (peak frequency) Cache – 64 KB L1 instructions cache with 24 KB single-cycle L0 cache, 512 KB L2 cache per duplex; 60 MB unified L3 cache; Cache QoS Memory – 6 channels of DDR4 2667 MT/s  for up to 768 […]