GIGABYTE GA-J1800N-D2H Review: Dual Core Bay Trail-D at $69
by Ian Cutress on December 26, 2014 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Bay Trail
Integrated Gaming Performance
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. For our integrated test we run at 1280x1024 on Low graphical settings.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Performance (1280x1024, Low) setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Performance (1280x1024, Low) setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a benchmarking wet dream – a highly complex benchmark that can bring the toughest setup and high resolutions down into single figures. Having an extreme SSAO setting can do that, but at the right settings Sleeping Dogs is highly playable and enjoyable. We run the basic benchmark program laid out in the Adrenaline benchmark tool, at the Performance (1280x1024, Low) setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
38 Comments
View All Comments
lioncat55 - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link
When ever I see a system like this I want to build a Plex server. But it never seems like the CPU is enough.LoneWolf15 - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link
@lioncat55 - Asrock makes the Q2900-ITX , a J2900 Bay Trail quad core. You'll probably find it a little more suitable.I went Core i3-3225 at the time I built my HTPC due to the HD4000 graphics. Still working well running XBMC Gotham.
xbenny - Saturday, December 27, 2014 - link
@lioncat55 - I hear you man I'm in the same quest check out this review of Q2900-ITX @techspot http://www.techspot.com/review/882-intel-pentium-j... @LoneWolf - still not enough for on-the-fly-transcoding for Plex serverStevoLincolnite - Saturday, December 27, 2014 - link
Give it time.These chips aren't even in the same league as the Core 2 processors from 6-7 years ago in terms of performance-per-clock, but they do use a tiny fraction of the energy.
They're certainly a big step up from the old Atoms.
Might start getting competitive with Nahelem class chips in the next 3-4 years, which is when things would start to get interesting.
barleyguy - Monday, December 29, 2014 - link
You can get an AMD FX-6300 for $89, and throw it on a cheap motherboard. It works great for Plex; the 6 integer cores are surprisingly good at transcoding. I'm doing 1080p full Bluray transcoded to 20 Mbps for playback across powerline ethernet.It does use way more electricity than one of these though.
Another decent Plex server is the NVidia Jetson board. There's an accelerated Plex build for it. It's almost $200, but includes the CPU, RAM, and 16 GB of storage, so it's basically turnkey. The power usage on that is about 7 watts typical and 15 watts peak, not counting the hard drive the movies are on. (This option does require some Linux knowledge. You need to update Linux for Tegra and set up Plex server as chroot.)
$.02
KWIE - Wednesday, January 7, 2015 - link
@lioncat55 - I have a FreeNAS box with Plex Server running inside a jail on an Asrock Q1900-ITX, basically the quad core version of this, but with lower per-core frequency. There are other versions available also including one with DC-in. The above model also has 4 SATA ports (vital for me with a 4 drive ZFS setup). I boot from a Sandisk Cruzer Fit USB drive with no issues.I have one large, slow fan blowing over the drives in the entire case and never have any heat issues. Very, very happy with it... and now considering building another for a family member.
dragosmp - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link
Great review, I like the comparison with HP's Stream. To push it further I would say in this particular case it's obvious one should pick up the OEM made, but what about if someone wants a quad BT? Then for 20$ more someone can get twice the performance for 5% in system cost. It's endless reasoning, but I just wanted to point out this bitbill.rookard - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link
Agreed. I have the ASRock Q1900M (quad-core, full size DIMMs, a few more x1 slots and a full x16 (x1 wired) slot) and that allows for quite a bit more flexibility. It's still a very small board - same depth as ITX, just a little more width. The extra x1 slots could allow for some extra sata connectivity, the x16 could allow for a more powerful gpu (the intel solution onboard is marginal at best - only 4EU's).Overall though, armed with a SSD (Samsung 830) it's more than adequate for HTPC duty.
ddriver - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link
The lack of performance is otherworldly.I guess gaming benches were a logical component of the review for this product, seeing how it is definitely intended for such tasks. /sarcasm
To hell with stuff like media playback or a file server, workloads such a product is actually suited for. Who cares how this product works for stuff it is actually usable for.
Gigaplex - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link
Insufficient SATA ports for this to be used as a file server.