GIGABYTE GB-BXi7H-5500 Broadwell BRIX Review
by Ganesh T S on January 29, 2015 7:00 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - I
The GIGABYTE GB-BXi7H-5500 was evaluated using our standard test suite for low power desktops / industrial PCs. We revamped our benchmark suite early last year after the publication of the Intel D54250WYK NUC review. We reran some of the new benchmarks on the older PCs also, but some of them couldn't be run on loaner samples. Therefore, the list of PCs in each graph might not be the same.
Futuremark PCMark 8
PCMark 8 provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system. The i7-5500U is obviously not as powerful as the i7-4770R in the BRIX Pro. As mentioned before, the main tussle is between the BXi7-4500 and BXi7H-5500, and here, the Broadwell-based unit takes a handy lead in all the Futuremark benchmarks. Note that both units were benchmarked with 16 GB of DDR3L memory running at 1866 MHz. This makes it more of a comparison of the CPUs themselves, rather than the rest of the system components.
Miscellaneous Futuremark Benchmarks
In the graphics department, we again see the i7-5500U perform better than the i7-4500U. The difference is very marked in the low end and mainstream tests, while the extreme high quality benchmarks still don't seem to be the Intel IGPs' cup of tea.
3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R15
We have moved on from R11.5 to R15 for 3D rendering evaluation. CINEBENCH R15 provides three benchmark modes - OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results. There is a slight improvement in the performance of the i7-5500U compared to the i7-4500 - mainly due to the higher clocks that can be sustained by the former while remaining under the required power envelop.
The OpenGL performance shows improvement, thanks to the updated GPU architecture, higher base clocks for the GPU and, possibly, driver updates.
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toshz - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
Does anyone know what's the difference between the AC7260 and AC7265 wireless adapters?I was looking into purchasing the AC7260 to update my ultrabook (currently using AC3160) and then I saw the AC7265. Couldn't find any difference between them on Intel's site.
Thanks.
kevith - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
Nice review, but why have you stopped opening the cases? I would be interested in one of these, but changing/adding cooling is a must.jrs77 - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
Allthough I very much like the idea of the smallest PC possible, the NUC or the BRIX (or anything else in this formfactor) is still too expensive compared to a more powerful and better customizable mITX-system.I can build a low-powered mITX-system for $600 (i5-4590T, H97 board, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 20x20x8cm case incl 90W PSU), which leaves me with money for the Win8.1 license (the one you didn't include in your price there!). Such a system, has much more value and can be strapped to the back of your screen not using anymore space than the NUC or BRIX.
zodiacfml - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
I agree. That's what I thought of this review. The processor is just too pricey.Someone could buy a notebook with an i5-Haswell with a AMD/Nvidia GPU near that price.
piasabird - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
If most of what you plan on doing viewing video an i3 with 4 megs of cache will work just fine.deathwombat - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
Does the top of the box actually say "Supports 2.5" Hard Drivers"? At least have someone proofread your packaging!eanazag - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
I agree on the networking. 2x2 Wifi would be better and Intel NIC. I dislike the Realtek NICs. With an Intel NIC there are more options from the software side, like a tiny VM server.vision33r - Saturday, January 31, 2015 - link
Intel has no pressure to improve performance.Mikad - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
This is just a small thing, but it has bothered me much lately: Many of the new articles have a quite bad "featured image". For example this one: Just a picture of the box with a bad lightning. The product itself is interesting but the picture is a turn off. IMHO it would be great if you could put more effort into these pictures.Teknobug - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Looks like gaming is out of the question, at least at 1920x1080. May as well go with an i3 or N2940 and play via Steam stream from a gaming PC.Otherwise everything else about this is awesome.