ECS LIVA One Skylake mini-PC Review
by Ganesh T S on February 1, 2016 8:00 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - II
In this section, we mainly look at benchmark modes in programs used on a day-to-day basis, i.e, application performance and not synthetic workloads.
x264 Benchmark
First off, we have some video encoding benchmarks courtesy of x264 HD Benchmark v5.0. This is simply a test of CPU performance. As expected, the Core i3-6100T emerges the winner by a big margin for the same reasons that it came out in front in the CPU-based Cinebench R15 3D rendering tests.
7-Zip
7-Zip is a very effective and efficient compression program, often beating out OpenCL accelerated commercial programs in benchmarks even while using just the CPU power. 7-Zip has a benchmarking program that provides tons of details regarding the underlying CPU's efficiency. In this subsection, we are interested in the compression and decompression MIPS ratings when utilizing all the available threads. Again, the ECS LIVA One emerges as the winner due to the presence of the Core i3-6100T
TrueCrypt
As businesses (and even home consumers) become more security conscious, the importance of encryption can't be overstated. The Core i3-6100T supports AES-NI instructions for accelerating the encryption and decryption processes. TrueCrypt, a popular open-source disk encryption program (that has since seen development discontinued) can take advantage of the AES-NI capabilities. The TrueCrypt internal benchmark provides some interesting cryptography-related numbers to ponder. In the graph below, we can get an idea of how fast a TrueCrypt volume would behave in the ECS LIVA One and how it would compare with other select PCs. This is a purely CPU feature / clock speed based test.
Agisoft Photoscan
Agisoft PhotoScan is a commercial program that converts 2D images into 3D point maps, meshes and textures. The program designers sent us a command line version in order to evaluate the efficiency of various systems that go under our review scanner. The command line version has two benchmark modes, one using the CPU and the other using both the CPU and GPU (via OpenCL). The benchmark takes around 50 photographs and does four stages of computation:
- Stage 1: Align Photographs
- Stage 2: Build Point Cloud (capable of OpenCL acceleration)
- Stage 3: Build Mesh
- Stage 4: Build Textures
We record the time taken for each stage. Since various elements of the software are single threaded, others multithreaded, and some use GPUs, it is interesting to record the effects of CPU generations, speeds, number of cores, DRAM parameters and the GPU using this software. These results are similar to the Futuremark benchmarks, as the memory configuration can result in a huge impact on the scores. With a single-channel configuration, the ECS LIVA One is at a disadvantage even when the other factors (newer microarchitecture, higher TDP etc.) are considered.
Dolphin Emulator
Wrapping up our application benchmark numbers is the Dolphin Emulator benchmark mode results. This is again a test of the CPU capabilities, and the ECS LIVA One emerges as the winner by a huge margin.
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mrdude - Tuesday, February 2, 2016 - link
The only thing AMD has proven proficient at is dragging ATi down with them. RTG is evidence of that.I'm aware x86 isn't going anywhere, but it's also sensible to assume AMD isn't going to be challenging Intel anytime soon -- or ever. We need the sort of competition we're seeing in the ARM space, and expecting AMD to step up, a company that can't consistently make new products that beat their old products, is a lesson in futility.
If ARM does encroach the server space with success, we might see history repeat itself with the RISC/big iron vs the up-start CISC/cheaper x86. This time, though, it's x86 on the receiving end.
mikato - Tuesday, February 2, 2016 - link
"we might see history repeat itself with the RISC/big iron vs the up-start CISC/cheaper x86."Itanium? Ok so not exactly RISC but some relevant history there.
My prediction is that the capabilities and specialties of both will just blend together eventually and we'll be using both.
Klimax - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
You don't want really ARM anywhere close desktop or notebooks. It's mentality and ideas are not really good for anything even remotely open. By comparison system of x86 is definition of open...atcronin - Monday, February 1, 2016 - link
Is Kodi using 'DXVA' Scaling and 'DXVA Best' de-interlacing? Because with those settings enabled the quality is more than just sufficient.ganeshts - Monday, February 1, 2016 - link
Kodi was evaluated with default settings. I only confirmed that the default settings made use of DXVA for video decoding.Anonymous Blowhard - Tuesday, February 2, 2016 - link
Hey, Intel. Are you listening?PUT IRIS PRO IN THIS.
Even if it's the "not-really-Pro" Iris 540/550, that's still enough gaming chops for a tiny little HTPC.
sitka - Wednesday, February 3, 2016 - link
I was looking up the price of liva-X a few days ago and was lead to ECS website.I saw the core and said wow based on looks,
I saw the one and said wow based on specs. usb3 typec holla
Now I'm going down a rabbit hole of Gigbyte BRIX configs.
Thank goodness I have a new/old T420 to play with because this small size market is so obscurely speced it is hard to buy in for fun, rather than need.
Thanks Anandtech for still being great, I just cried realizing how much value being attentive to hardware has given me. I pay attention because I like it. But it has ended up with a good paid job, family, homes, boats... that is because I like it, or because of andandtech, or because of Shimpi when we used to build water cooled RAMBUS servers. Don't know, it just makes sense.
zodiacfml - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Finally a small factor that has desktop CPU and with a price just a bit more expensive than a laptop with same specs. I could not fault the whole design.The microSD choice is a mystery though. See, devices that use the microSD standard are typically smartphones or tablets which is quite fiddly to take the card out; just use a USB cable or connect through wireless. SD cards use are typically from digital/video cameras where transfer performance is better through a card reader than USB 2.0.
I think they went with the adapter because it appears to be an existing laptop charger based on its voltage and amperage specs, which makes it cheaper to source.
Lastly, I wanted to see photos of its internals. I don't know why the article doesn't since he mentioned having access to it.
echtogammut - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
I considered this when building my Mother a new PC for her birthday. I ended up building a mini-ITX Skylake i5-6500 system with 16GB RAM and 250GB SSD for $526. Spending the couple of extra dollars effectively doubled the system performance and while a bit larger, it also has DVD drive (which is something important for her) and the option to add a graphics card if needed.bhtooefr - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Interesting to see this format in a consumer machine. It's been around for a little while now (since Ivy Bridge for Lenovo, and Haswell for everyone else, AFAIK) in business desktops (the Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny Desktops, the Dell OptiPlex Micros, and the HP ProDesk/EliteDesk Desktop Minis), and I think it's a better design than 5x5, because it makes more efficient use of the space available to it - 5x5 ends up requiring a much thicker chassis to fit a 2.5" HDD/SSD in there (because it doesn't fit beside the heatsink), increasing volume. (That said, I wonder how bad the noise is on the 65 watt TDP EliteDesks - Lenovo and Dell only offer 35 watt CPUs in that size chassis.)(Disclaimer: I work for Dell, but these opinions are my own, and I've never actually handled Dell's products in this space, only one of Lenovo's (and that because my local Goodwill had an M73 Tiny for $4, and I couldn't pass it up).)