GIGABYTE BRIX Pro: A First Look at the Intel i7-4770R with Iris Pro HD 5200
by Ganesh T S on January 7, 2014 8:00 PM EST
The presence of the Core i7-4770R in such a small form factor / chassis left us worried initially. We were wondering whether the unit would be able to properly cool down a 65W TDP processor within those constraints. Due to the size of the system, the fan had to be pretty small and rotate at high speeds for effective cooling. With a maximum speed of 4090 rpm, the sound from the unit was similar to what one would expect in a mini-server room (matching the noise from the Netgear GSM 7352S that we have running in our NAS testbed). While running various benchmarks, the speed topped out around 3900 rpm.
To stress the unit to the maximum, we unleashed our Prime 95 + FurMark stress test and recorded the following numbers.
At the outset, the idle numbers are impressive for a system with a 65W TDP desktop processor. Note that this is not a ULV CPU like what we had in the Intel NUC. The load numbers indicate a maximum power consumption of approximately 88W. I did see the instantaneous power consumption shoot up to 92 - 93W initially and attributed this to the Core i7-4770R's turbo mode (where the CPU clock can go up to as high as 3.9 GHz compared to the nominal 3.2 GHz). A look at the temperatures and HWiNFO throttling information, however, confirmed what we had feared.
Gallery: GIGABYTE BRIX Pro
The unit does seem to throttle under full load of both the CPU and GPU (an unrealistic workload, admittedly, but one which some of the other systems we have evaluated have passed with flying colours). Now, the results that we obtained for the four passes of our x264 benchmark run were pretty consistent. It might turn out that normal workloads don't trigger the throttling and it is something we hope to evaluate further down the road.
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jabber - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Nice to see more micro systems appearing.PsychoPif - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Thanks for the quick review, can't wait for the last part.I'm currently looking for a HTPC / casual gaming machine for my home theater and this look like it could be it.
protomech - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
I don't think you want server room noise coming from your htpc.yterbiu - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
hah,when you are seeing a movie/playing a game you can hear the noise from that box....you are doing it wrong,matenathanddrews - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
If you define "casual" as a graphic quality setting, then this will get 60fps+ at 720p on low settings in modern games. Move to medium-to-high settings or higher resolutions and it will fall apart. You'll be better served by a new AMD Kaveri system... and probably save quite a bit of money while you're at it.mikk - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
I doubt Kaveri is faster than this Iris Pro 65W.DanNeely - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
The GPU is probably faster, the CPU probably not. In most games the IGP will bottleneck before the CPU does.Drumsticks - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
Given that the iris pro is about as powerful as a 640M (a bit more) and the kaveri 7850k targets 7750 levels of performance, which is faster than the desktop 640 and I think possibly the 650, I think it is safe to say that the GPU will be better. I don't expect the CPU to beat 3+ Ghz Haswell, but we we will see!TeXWiller - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link
This thing is about as fast in the 3DMark (2013) Ice Storm and little faster in the Cloud Gate test than my home 1055T with DDR2 800 and 7750.frozentundra123456 - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link
Nobody really knows the performance of Kaveri yet, but I seriously doubt it will reach even close to HD7750 GDDR5 levels of performance due to bandwidth limitations. And dont forget that is a desktop part. I think 65 watt Kaveri and 65 watt iris pro would be very close in performance, and I actually think the iris pro would be faster. Problem is it is also more expensive, although 529.00 for the 4570R kit is not outrageous.