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
We have had a quick glance at what the Core i7-4770R is capable of in the BRIX Pro. The initial look has given us various avenues to explore in the second part of the review. After getting back from CES, our first plan is to investigate whether any real-world workloads can cause the unit to throttle. The WLAN card is also pending investigation. At first glance it appears to be a 1x1 802.11ac card from Realtek, but more tests need to be done in order to get an idea of the WLAN performance.
The unit does offer the DIY crowd a little bit of flexibility in fine-tuning the performance. With judicious choice of DRAM and SSD / HDD storage, it is possible to adapt the BRIX Pro to one's requirements. The effect of the choice of DRAM modules can't be overstated in determining the performance of the system. We plan to benchmark the unit with a couple of additional DRAM modules (varying in size and speed). The Corsair Vengeance SODIMMs capable of running at 1866 MHz and the 8 GB per stick ADATA stick capable of running at 1600 MHz are already with us. The memory slots in the BRIX Pro are tuned for DDR3L (1.35V DRAM). It will be interesting to watch what speeds can be hit with these memory modules.
Additionally, as readers requested in our NUC review, we plan to add some basic gaming benchmarks to the mix. Anand has already covered the gaming performance of the Iris Pro HD5200 in detail before, but this will give some additional context for the BRIX Pro as a gaming machine.
Gigabyte's press release for the BRIX Pro went out yesterday. The product has two SKUs, one based on the i7-4770R, and the other based on the i5-4570R. Both CPUs have 65W TDPs, and hence there should really be nothing different between the two versions other than the CPU itself. One of the interesting aspects in the press release was the reference to 64 MB of eDRAM on the Iris Pro HD 5200. Anand's testing of the i7-4950HQ estimated the amount of eDRAM to be around 128 MB as per Intel's specifications. However, Gigabyte continues to hold on to the 64 MB eDRAM number for the i7-4770R and the i5-4570R even after a request for comment was sent. This is one additional aspect that we would like to evaluate in our second part of the review.
The final aspect that we are covering today is pricing. The i7-4770R and i5-4570R cost $392 and $288 respectively (as per the ARK pages). They are only available to OEMs. The MSRP for the GB-BXi5-4570R is $529, while the GB-BXi7-4770R comes in at $649. Considering that no other vendor has brought out a i7-4770R system, Gigabyte can charge a premium and still get away with it. Given the high price demanded by Intel for the CPU alone, the end pricing of the systems don't appear outrageous.
The BRIX Pro is a very exciting system and will definitely energize the NUC / UCFF category. The only worrying point is the thermal performance. Would it have been better for the 47W TDP version (i7-4950HQ) to come in this chassis, with the 65W TDP version sacrificing some of the compactness for a better cooling system? At this point, we don't want to jump to conclusions before digging more into the throttling behaviour. Stay tuned for further coverage towards the end of this month.
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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.