ECS LIVA Q3D and ACEMAGIC T8 Plus micro-PCs Review: Jasper Lake and Alder Lake-N in a Smaller-than-UCFF Package

GPU Performance: Synthetic Benchmarks

The integrated GPU in Jasper Lake uses a very old microarchitecture tracing its roots back to Gemini Lake. On the other hand, the one in Alder Lake-N uses a pared-down version of the one used in Alder Lake. As a result, the comparison between the T8 Plus and the LIVA Q3D promises to be an interesting one. The latter has 32 EUs clocked at 850 MHz, while the former has 16 EUs at 1200 MHz. 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. Prior to that, a detailed look at the capabilities of the GPU is warranted.

GPU-Z (as of v2.55.0) still doesn't recognize the iGPU in Jasper Lake, but AIDA64 is able to provide all the necessary details.

On the other hand, Alder Lake-N had no identification issues.

The remaining subsections below look into the performance aspects.

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 newer T8 Plus delivers better performance than the LIVA Q3D. However, Jasper Lake systems with higher power budgets manage to easily surpass the performance of the T8 Plus.

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.

The T8 Plus has a slight edge over the LIVA Q3D in these two workloads, but the Atlas Canyon NUC with its higher power budget remains the best in class among the Atom-based systems.

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.

We were unable to process Time Spy and succeeding workloads completely on the LIVA Q3D (similar problem to what we faced with the LIVA Z3), but the score of the T8 Plus sees it maintain the same ordering as what was observed in the previous workloads.

3DMark Wild Life and Night Raid

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.

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.

The higher power budget and EU count in the Atlas Canyon NUC again sees the T8 Plus slipping behind it in the Night Raid workload as well as the Wild Life one.