Jasper Lake Fanless Showdown: ECS LIVA Z3 and ZOTAC ZBOX CI331 nano UCFF PCs Review
by Ganesh T S on July 8, 2022 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- ZOTAC
- Fanless
- ECS
- Passive Cooling
- UCFF
- Mini-PC
- Jasper Lake
GPU Performance
In moving from Gemini Lake to Jasper Lake, the integrated GPU didn't get as much attention as the CPU did. While retaining the same microarchitecture, the shift to 10nm allowed for integrating more execution units and slight improvements in the maximum clocks. The systems we are looking at today come with different variants of the same GPU microarchitecture:
- Intel June Canyon and ECS LIVA Z2 (Gemini Lake): 18EU @ 750 MHz
- ECS LIVA Z3 / JSLM-MINI (Jasper Lake): 32EU @ 850 MHz
- ZOTAC ZBOX CI331 nano (Jasper Lake): 24EU @ 850 MHz
Based on these specifications alone, we expect the JSLM-MINI / LIVA Z3 to handily best the other systems in GPU performance. However, there are a few caveats to consider:
- Power budget / PL1 limit is higher for the ZBOX CI331 nano compared to the JSLM-MINI
- The June Canyon NUC is actively cooled and is not affected by thermal throttling
- The LIVA Z3 and JSLM-MINI operate with DDR4-2666 SODIMMs, while the ZBOX operates with DDR4-2933 SODIMMs
Keeping these aspects in mind, the GPU performance has to be evaluated in the context of each workload. We put the systems through some standard 3D workloads to get an idea of what they have to offer for GPU-intensive tasks.
GFXBench
The DirectX 12-based GFXBench tests from Kishonti are cross-platform, and available all the way down to smartphones. As such, they are not very taxing for discrete GPUs and modern integrated GPUs. We processed the offscreen versions of the 'Aztec Ruins' benchmark.
The ZBOX CI331 nano's iGPU has extra EUs compared to the June Canyon NUC. It also has faster RAM access. Though the number of EUs is lesser than the iGPU's in the LIVA Z3 / JSLM-MINI, the higher PL1 limit and faster RAM access help the ZBOX to emerge as the leader in both GFXBench workloads.
UL 3DMark
Four different workload sets were processed in 3DMark - Fire Strike, Time Spy, Night Raid, and Wild Life.
3DMark Fire Strike
The Fire Strike benchmark has three workloads. The base version is meant for high-performance gaming PCs. It uses DirectX 11 (feature level 11) to render frames at 1920 x 1080. The Extreme version targets 1440p gaming requirements, while the Ultra version targets 4K gaming system, and renders at 3840 x 2160. The graph below presents the overall score for the Fire Strike Extreme and Fire Strike Ultra benchmark across all the systems that are being compared.
| UL 3DMark - Fire Strike Workloads | |||
The Extreme workload sees the CI331 nano come out comfortably on top for the same reasons as the ones discussed in the GFXBench subsection - the higher PL1 limits, extra EUs compared to June Canyon, and faster DRAM. The Ultra workload (which doesn't make much sense for UCFF PCs based on low-power processors like Jasper Lake anyway) sees both the LIVA Z3 and the ZBOX CI331 nano get timed out - in all probability due to thermal throttling.
3DMark Time Spy
The Time Spy workload has two levels with different complexities. Both use DirectX 12 (feature level 11). However, the plain version targets high-performance gaming PCs with a 2560 x 1440 render resolution, while the Extreme version renders at 3840 x 2160 resolution. The graphs below present both numbers for all the systems that are being compared in this review.
| UL 3DMark - Time Spy Workloads | |||
The LIVA Z3 is thermally limited to the extent that neither Time Spy workload completes. The extra EUs and faster RAM help the ZBOX in the normal Time Spy workload. However, at higher resolutions (Extreme), the ZBOX gets thermally limited and its lowered power budget is insufficient to see it get past the June Canyon and JSLM-MINI.
3DMark Wild Life
The Wild Life workload was initially introduced as a cross-platform GPU benchmark in 2020. It renders at a 2560 x 1440 resolution using Vulkan 1.1 APIs on Windows. It is a relatively short-running test, reflective of mobile GPU usage. In mid-2021, UL released the Wild Life Extreme workload that was a more demanding version that renders at 3840 x 2160 and runs for a much longer duration reflective of typical desktop gaming usage.
| UL 3DMark - Wild Life Workloads | |||
The Wild Life workload was again a mixed bag for the ZBOX, with thermal behavior causing timeouts. The LIVA Z3 failed in both components. Active cooling and a consistent power budget actually see the Gemini Lake-based June Canyon NUC on the leaderboard this time.
3DMark Night Raid
The Night Raid workload is a DirectX 12 benchmark test. It is less demanding than Time Spy, and is optimized for integrated graphics. The graph below presents the overall score in this workload for different system configurations.
Power budget seems to be the primary factor for the Night Raid workload. The June Canyon NUC is at the top despite its limited EUs and slower RAM. The JSLM-MINI is able to sustain a 6W PL1 for extended durations, and coupled with the extra EUs over the CI331 nano, it handily bests the ZBOX in this workload.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
52 Comments
View All Comments
xol - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
Correction (?)Neither of these reviewed products has a Intel UHD Graphics 605 .. (that's a 14nm Gemini part with 18 EU eg here https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
.. Intel seems to have not publisher a 'number' for this iGPU and seems to distinguish them by number of EU eg Jasper Lake 24EU eg https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/products...
xol - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
Somehow messed up the link :UHD 605 https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
mode_13h - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
Thanks for your coverage of fanless mini-PCs. However, I really wish you'd include something with "big cores", so we can get a sense of the scale of performance difference between them and Tremont.Another nice-to-have would be at least a few benchmarks including a Raspberry Pi 4. However, it has serious thermal throttling issues, unless it's actively cooled or you use a substantial passive cooling solution.
mode_13h - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
I guess the ideal comparison would be a Tiger Lake-based system, since that's the same vintage and similar manufacturing tech as Tremont. Probably much harder to find in a fanless mini-PC, unless we're talking about an industrial PC, but I'd love even to see a comparison between two NUCs: Tiger Lake vs. Tremont.mode_13h - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
Or maybe Ice Lake would be even better, but did they make Ice Lake-based NUCs?abufrejoval - Thursday, July 14, 2022 - link
Yes, Tiger Lake NUCs were made, but also very hard to come by: I have both.In a way they are perfect to showcase the benefit of E/P cores …in the case of Intel: AMD is really another story.
The two NUCs look nearly identical on the outside, but inside they are very different beasts.
For starters: The Tiger Lake NUC11 (i7-1165G7 with 96EU Xe iGPU) is configured with a 64 Watt PL2, a rather long TAU and even the PL2 is 30 Watts by default, I believe. There is a reason it comes with a 90 Watts power brick! I changed PL2 to 50, TAU to 10 seconds and PL1 to 15 Watts to ensure the fan would never howl they way it does with the defaults.
I’ve seen HWinfo report a 5GHz maximum clock, but 4.7GHz is the official top speed. It’s at 64 Watts and near 5GHz clocks that I have measured 1707/5808 Geekbench 4 results on Linux (always a bit faster than on Windows). Jasper Lake doesn’t quite play in the same league at 781/2540 using 3.3 GHz and 10 Watts. In Watts/compute power Tiger Lake looks rather worse than Jasper Lake, but when it comes to rendering a complex web page or recalculating a giant Excel sheet, its sprinting power certainly has it appear much faster.
At 64 Watts the Tiger Lake is a desktop CPU, shoehorned into mobile power envelopes. And when it’s constrained to the levels that passive cooling can manage (see the Supermicro SYS-E100-12T-H review here), it really struggles to deliver that performance. The great thing about the Tiger Lake NUC is that you can change PL1, PL2 and TAU to pretty much anything you want and when you set it to the 10 Watts the Jasper Lake gets to use as an absolute maximum, it starts to do rather badly.
Some of that is because the iGPU always gets preference, leaving close to nothing to the CPU. But some of that is that the remaining power budget forces very low frequencies, where the big Core CPU loses against the Atom cores running at a full speed with these Watts.
Jasper Lake, like all the other Atoms since the J1900, never slows down. I’ve never seen it drop below its “Turbo” clock unless idle, even on a mix of Prime95 and Furmark, and I’ve never seen it exceed 10 Watts of combined CPU+GPU power consumption either.
I also have two Ryzen 5800U based notebooks (1443/7855 on Geekbench4), one of which can be switched between 15 and 28 Watts of TDP. When Tiger Lake and Zen 3 are strictly set to the same power levels, Tiger Lake has to run much slower even with half the cores: Ryzen beats it with a much smaller energy footprint per core. But with Tiger Lake left at the default NUC settings (which a battery powered notebook could not support), its four cores will beat an eight core Zen 3 at 15 Watts in Geekbench, which luckily never seems to exceed TAU.
Intel needs E/P because P cores need too much power at the clock rates they require to beat a Ryzen core, and only with E cores they can hit the efficiency of Zen cores in fully multi-threaded loads.
mode_13h - Thursday, July 14, 2022 - link
Wow, another awesome post! Thanks for taking the time to relate your findings. Very interesting!> the iGPU always gets preference, leaving close to nothing to the CPU.
Very key point, but also one that Intel could conceivably address, to some extent, in future BIOS updates. Not that they're likely to, if it had been on the market for a while when you tested, but it's conceivable.
> in Geekbench, which luckily never seems to exceed TAU.
Another great point! I have never run Geekbench myself, and I haven't noticed reviewers mention this key detail.
Foeketijn - Saturday, September 3, 2022 - link
Don't you want to write for Anand?stanleyipkiss - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
Zotac makes a fanless zbox with a 1165G7xol - Friday, July 8, 2022 - link
Benches I've seen suggest both are very similar in multi to a i3 low power Skylake eg a ie-6100T (2core 4 thread very common thin client chip) - the gfx capability also seems also a close match for the 24EU part [probably a very similar part with improved HEVC support] (the 32EU N6000 should be better)For single threaded the old Skylake is ~+50% faster., and from Skylake to Alder Lake it's nearly 2x , so nearly 3x from N5100 to i5-12500 for single thread
I have an old fanless Atom Z3735F (22nm) and these new SoCs are a impressive step up (~7x both cpu and gpu) -- I think the Pi Model B latest is very roughly 2x better than that nut no where near the 5100T in any metric.
tldr both benches would have been a wash one way of the other.