I’m in the process of reviewing Tronsmart Ara X5 mini PC with Intel Atom x5-Z8300 “Cherry Trail” processor, and while testing is not complete yet, I’ve already run PCMark8 benchmarks in the Windows 10 device, so I’ve decided to compare the results I got with MeLE PCG03 mini PC running Windows 10 based on an older Z3735F Bay Trail-T processor that’s about the same price, and with the same 2W TDP. This post can be considered a work in progress, as I may update it latter to add more benchmarks results in Windows or/and Linux (Phoronix).
Th exact test I ran was “PCMark 8 Home 3.0 Conventional 3.0”. Both system resolutions were set to 1920×1080, however one noticeable difference is that MeLE PCG03 ran Windows 10 Home 32-bit, while Tronsmart Ara X5 ran Windows 10 Home 64-bit.
| Benchmark | MeLE PCG03 Intel Atom Z3735F Bay-Trail @ 1.33 GHz / 1.83 GHz (Turbo) |
Tronsmart Ara X5 Intel Atom x5-Z8300 Cherry Trail @ 1.44 GHz / 1.84 GHz (Turbo) |
Ratio |
| PCMark8 | |||
| Overall Score | 1052 | 1048 | 1.00 |
| Web Browsing – JunglePin | 0.58064 s | 0.67417 s | 0.86 |
| Web Browsing – Amazonia | 0.19591 s | 0.23567 s | 0.83 |
| Writing | 11 s | 11.78254 s | 0.93 |
| Casual Gaming | 6.7 fps | 7.62 fps | 1.14 |
| Video Chat playback | 30 fps | 29.95 fps | 1.00 |
| Video Chat encoding | 318 ms | 364 ms | 0.87 |
| Photo Editing | 2.7 s | 2.63164 s | 1.03 |
A score greater than one means that the Cherry Trail processor outperforms, with some score where higher is better, and others where lower is better. The overall score shows both platforms have about the same performance, although the detailed results show 3735F being slightly faster for web browsing, write and video chat encoding, while x5-Z8300 was better at casual gaming, so the Gen8 GPU appears to help here despited the lower frequency (400MHz vs 677 MHz) reported in HWInfo32/64.
Even though, you should not expect a boost in performance, the Cherry Trail processor however has two advantages: support for 3840×2160 up to 30 Hz / 4096×2160 up to 24Hz, and HEVC/H.265 hardware support. PCMark8 simulates real tasks like photo editing, but it might be useful to add some other synthetic benchmarks.
[Update 25/8/2015: So finally I decided to run Passmark and 3DMark benchmark. I don’t own MeLE PCG03 so instead I used MeLE PCG01 stick, also based on Intel Atom Z3735F, and upgraded to Windows 10. MeLE PCG03 and PCG01 had about the same results with PCMark8 in Win 8.1 (1,105 vs 1,106 )
| Benchmark | MeLE PCG01 Intel Atom Z3735F @ 1.33 GHz |
Tronsmart Ara X5 Intel Atom x5-Z8300 @ 1.44 GHz |
Ratio |
| Passmark 8 | |||
| Passmark Rating* | 466 | 508 | 1.09 |
| CPU Mark | 904 | 1444 | 1.60 |
| 2D Graphics Mark | 125 | 128 | 1.02 |
| 3D Graphics Mark | 123 | 238 | 1.93 |
| Memory Mark | 423 | 575 | 1.36 |
| 3DMark | |||
| Ice Storm 1.2 | 14069 | 19709 | 1.40 |
| Cloud Gate 1.1 | 1156 | 1660 | 1.44 |
| Sky Diver 1.0 | 439 | 885 | 2.02 |
| Fire Strike | 0 (Driver Failure) | 202 | N/A |
These two benchmarks show a significant better performance for the Atom x5-Z8300 processor when it comes with 3D graphics with the Cherry Trail processor being between 40% to over 100% faster compared to Z3735F. The CPU Mark is also 60% faster, while the memory mark is 30% faster. Again, both systems were benchmarked at 1920×1080 @ 60Hz resolution and frame rate.
* Passmark Rating also includes the storage performance, and Disk Mark was 200 for Ara X5, and 700 for PCG01, which should explain why the overall score is closer than one would have expected.
Links to the results page:
- Passmark 8 – Tronsmart Ara X5 and MeLE PCG01
- 3DMark – Tronsmart Ara X5 and MeLE PCG01
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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