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The stand-out feature of the BRIX is undoubtedly the new Kaby Lake i7 CPU. The successor to the Skylake family of processors, it will be interesting to see how the Kaby Lake architecture improves over Skylake, if at all.
Above, we see an overview of the new hardware.
The i7-7500U is a dual-core processor with HyperThreading. It has a base clock of 2.7GHz and a boost clock of 3.5GHz. That being said, I found that even when idling, the CPU constantly operates at its 3.5GHz maximum clock speed.
The integrated graphics are Intel HD Graphics 620, with a base clock of 300MHz. However, in theory at least, the graphics chip can boost as high as 1.05GHz.
Comparison systems
Today I will be comparing the BRIX i7A-7500 with the following systems, where applicable:
- Intel Core i7-6700HQ
- Nvidia GTX 960M
- 16GB Dual-Channel 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
- 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD
- Intel Bay Trail-M Celeron N2808 SoC
- Intel HD Graphics
- 4GB DDR3L RAM
- 64GB eMMc storage
- Intel Braswell N3050 SoC
- Intel HD Graphics
- 2GB DDR3L RAM
- 32GB eMMC storage
- Intel Core i3 i3-5010U
- Intel HD Graphics 5500
- 8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
- 240GB Kingston V300 SSD
- Intel Core™ m5-6Y57
- Intel HD Graphics 515
- 8GB LPDDR3 1866MHz Memory
- 256GB Solid State Drive M2 2280 PCIe
- Intel Core i5-6500
- Asus Turbo GTX 960
- 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2400MHz DDR4 RAM
- 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD
- Intel Core i7-6820HK
- Nvidia GTX 980 (desktop)
- 32GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM
- 2x 256GB Samsung SM951 PCIe SSDs in RAID0
- AMD FX-8320
- AMD RX-480
- 16GB DDR3 2133MHz RAM
- 240GB Adata Premier SP550
PCSpecialist Defiance III 17.3
- Intel i7-6700HQ
- Nvidia GTX 1060
- 16GB HyperX DDR4 2133MHz RAM
- 512GB SanDisk X400 M.2 SATA SSD
- Intel i7-6700HQ
- Nvidia GTX 950
- 16GB Crucial DDR4 2133MHz RAM
- 512GB Samsung Pro M.2 SSD
And lastly my personal desktop with a Core i3-4160, 8GB 1866MHz DDR3 and a GTX 960.
Test software
- SiSoft Sandra
- Cinebench R15
- Handbrake
- CrystalDiskMark
- ATTO Disk Benchmark
- 3DMark
- Prime 95 (version 26.6)
- CPUID HWMonitor
- AIDA64 Engineer
- PCMark 8
Finally, I also test with Tomb Raider (2013) to assess the graphical capabilities of the BRIX.
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Seems silly not to wait for the iris graphics next quarter.
Nice little unit for sure but as B Brad pointed if there is going to be a Iris Graphics version next quarter then it would be worth the wait. This would make a nice front room entertainment device for video playback and very light duty gaming as it is now.