- Back to homepage
- Related articles
  Related articles

Gigabyte BRIX Pro Mini-PC Review

Others/All-in-one PC by leeghoofd @ 2014-04-22

Does size really matter? On some human levels it might, though a different trend has been observed in the PC market over the last year. Compact is the key word, featuring mITX sized motherboards and idem ditto enclosures. These compact PCs are playing a more and more important role in every manufacturers' lineup: Mini PCs, NUCs, they are all amongst us now. For most users the bundled power is more than plenty as the size maters the most. Nevertheless combining the raw power of a desktop setup inside a mini sized housing is a step in another direction. Gigabyte is having big success with their Brix boxes, time to step up one level. Today we are going to test one of these Gigabyte supercharged versions: the BRIX Pro.

3D Synthetic Tests

The 2D performance is top notch, but the best is yet to come. Whoever thought the AMD APUs are the icing on the cake will be proven wrong on the following pages; the high end Intel solution, the Iris Pro HD5200 with embedded 128MB eDRAM is ready for a fight. Let us start off with a few synthetic benchmarks and then take a few games for a spin.

Futuremarks 3DMARK11 is a clear victory for the Intel i7-4770R, With no competition at all from the other non Iris Pro variants. The 512 shaders of the AMD 7850K Kaveri CPU keep it all within tracking distance, though take note that the AMD APUs were tested at higher RAM speeds (1866 & 2133MHz) versus 1600MHz Ram ratio for the Intel solutions.

For all the processors, besides the i7-4770R, the integrated graphics performance is highly dependent on the system memory speeds, hence why we include the same tests conducted with 2400MHz Ram speed. As you can see the gap is marginally closed. Yet the embedded eDRAM is so much faster and allows the Iris Pro to remain easily on top. The graphic performance of the 7850K HD6680D is a tad faster than the Iris Pro at when being used with 2400MHz Rams? Too bad as the raw crunching power is lacking to grab the top spot.

Catzilla from AllBenchmark is a fun and fast benchmark that tests your graphics card on several levels, fun to watch and the included audio track is pretty hardcore too. The embedded eDRAM allows the Iris Pro literally to thrash the competition and the other Intel designs. Again the faster Ram speed helps to boost the performance, though the HD5200 is way too fast.

No comments available.

All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.