Last Updated on September 6, 2020
Out of the 4 machines in question, only the AK41 has DDR4 RAM, the others use DDR3 RAM.
The most significant differences between DDR3 and DDR4 RAM is higher module density and lower voltage requirements combined with higher data rate transfer speeds. Current generation DDR4 modules start at 2133MHz, with official support for up to DDR4-3200. Modules can be overclocked.
I was therefore expecting to see the AK41 emerge victorious in memory benchmarks. RAMspeed tests the system memory (RAM) performance.
The benchmark results are curious. According to the test, there’s no discernible difference in memory performance between the UX305FA’s DDR3 RAM and the AK41’s DDR4 RAM. Yet the AK41 outshines the other two Mini PCs.
Again, this benchmark tests the system memory (RAM) performance. And again, there’s negligible difference in speed between the UX305FA’s DDR3 RAM and the AK41’s DDR4 RAM.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / System
Page 2 – Processor
Page 3 – Memory
Page 4 – Graphics
Page 5 – Disk
| AWOW AK41 | |
|---|---|
| Type | Mini PC |
| Processor | Intel Celeron J4115 running at 1.80GHz (Turbo 2.5 GHz) with 4 cores and 4 threads |
| Chipset | Intel Gemini Lake |
| Memory | 8GB DDR4 (2133 MHz) |
| Graphics | Intel UHD Graphics 605 |
| Disk | 128GB Foresee NVMe M.2 SSD F900F128GBH |
| AWOW NYI3 | Gigabyte BXBT-1900 | Asus UX305FA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Mini PC | Mini PC | Laptop |
| Processor | Intel Core i3-5005U 2.00GHz 2 cores 4 threads | Intel Celeron J1900 2.00GHz (Turbo 2.416 GHz) 4 cores 4 threads | Intel Core M-5Y10c 0.8GHz (Turbo 2.00GHz) 2 cores 4 threads |
| Chipset | Intel Broadwell | Intel Atom Z36xxx/Z37xxx | Intel Broadwell-U-OPI |
| Memory | 8GB DDR4 (1600 MHz) | 4GB DDR3 (1600 MHz) | 8GB DDR3 (1866 MHz) |
| Graphics | Intel HD Graphics 5500 | Intel HD 2GB | Intel HD Graphics 5300 |
| Disk | 128GB Kingston NVMe | 250GB Samsung SSD 860 | 128GB SanDisk SSD |
Complete list of articles in this series:
| AWOW AK41 Mini PC | |
|---|---|
| Week 11 | Video consoles: SNES emulation |
| Week 10 | Running TeamViewer with AWOW AK41 as the host |
| Week 9 | Astronomy on the AK41 including Celestia, Stellarium, Skychart, and more |
| Week 8 | Recording video with OBS Studio |
| Week 7 | Home computer emulators: FS-UAE, ZEsaurUX, Hatari, Clock Signal |
| Week 6 | Web browsing with Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Vivaldi |
| Week 5 | Gaming: SuperTuxKart, AwesomeNauts, Retrocycles, Robocraft, DOTA 2, and more |
| Week 4 | Run multiple operating systems on the AK41 |
| Week 3 | Video and audio playback looking at hardware acceleration |
| Week 2 | Benchmarking the AK41 with 3 other low power machines |
| Week 1 | Introduction to the series including wiping Windows and installing Manjaro |
This blog is written on the AWOW AK41 Mini PC.
Were the tests run with the powersave CPU scaling governor?
Yes, all tests on each machine used the powersave governor. While it’s possible the benchmarks would be (slightly) higher with the performance governor, the powersave governor is the default on the system.