Gaming on Brix

[walwalka]

I was looking at the gigabyte brix with the Intel Core i5-4570R, I was wondering if anyone has one and have played games other than battlefield on it? Like Counter strike: source and maybe some league of legend? Maybe even CS:GO. They don't have to be maxed out at 1080p, but I would like them to play well at medium-high settings.

I've just been struggling to find any good threads on the performance of the unit.

I'm just curious as to how it performs, I want something small that doesn't take up much desk space but offer good performance. Trying to stuff it up behind my TV at times, there is not a whole lot of room there.

This is the one in question:

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Bare...d=1416452069&sr=8-3&keywords=gigabyte+brix+i5

Thanks!

 

[chameleoneel]

Depending on the game, that's going to feel like a PS3 or a PS3.5, if such a thing existed.

Your looking at 720p and 30 - 60fps, depending upon the game and quality settings.

In my opinion, you would be much better off building a micro atx or smaller, in a slim case with an PCI-E slot. then put a low profile Nvidia 750 in it.

 

[polarman5k]

What about the gaming brix. they can get hot but they play games better.

http://www.gigabyte.co.nz/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5217#ov

http://www.gigabyte.co.nz/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5156#ov

Still be better off with an mitx build if you can manage it tho

 

[limitedaccess]

The i5-4570R with the iris pro HD 5200 is much faster than the xbox360/ps3 class consoles. The problem is of course last gen console games were targeting 720p (or even less) while 1080p is roughly 2.25 more pixels and corresponding performance. So it can't quite flawlessly do last gen console graphics at 1080p across the board.

Performance is probably roughly like a 5750 or GT 650m, so you can look at benchmarks of those to get an idea. Or even look at 5770 and GT 750m benchmarks for added data points. Notebookcheck is a site which will have more data available.

In terms of LoL and CSGO it's more than enough for 1080p with your criteria. Using a 5770 currently I can run CSGO at 1080p 4xAA (rest max) at well over 60fps avg (something like ~100s). LoL I remember ran fine at 1080p with a mix of settings of low/med/high with a i5-4200u, using a GT 750m or the HD4400 didn't actually make much of a difference as the performance was more limited by the slow CPU (eg. team battles with heavy particle effects). This was on an ultrathin laptop (not sure if there was throttling issues), you're setup will have much more thermal headroom.

 

[walwalka]

Depending on the game, that's going to feel like a PS3 or a PS3.5, if such a thing existed.

Your looking at 720p and 30 - 60fps, depending upon the game and quality settings.

In my opinion, you would be much better off building a micro atx or smaller, in a slim case with an PCI-E slot. then put a low profile Nvidia 750 in it.

I was trying to find something that will fit and I don't game that much, this seemed to fit the bill. I'll look more into the mitx build.

What about the gaming brix. they can get hot but they play games better.

http://www.gigabyte.co.nz/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5217#ov

http://www.gigabyte.co.nz/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5156#ov

Still be better off with an mitx build if you can manage it tho

I was wanting to stick to the the desktop class quad core, but I'm sure that the mobile CPU with the graphics card would probably be a better option. I just the machine for some VM's here and there for school

The i5-4570R with the iris pro HD 5200 is much faster than the xbox360/ps3 class consoles. The problem is of course last gen console games were targeting 720p (or even less) while 1080p is roughly 2.25 more pixels and corresponding performance. So it can't quite flawlessly do last gen console graphics at 1080p across the board.

Performance is probably roughly like a 5750 or GT 650m, so you can look at benchmarks of those to get an idea. Or even look at 5770 and GT 750m benchmarks for added data points. Notebookcheck is a site which will have more data available.

In terms of LoL and CSGO it's more than enough for 1080p with your criteria. Using a 5770 currently I can run CSGO at 1080p 4xAA (rest max) at well over 60fps avg (something like ~100s). LoL I remember ran fine at 1080p with a mix of settings of low/med/high with a i5-4200u, using a GT 750m or the HD4400 didn't actually make much of a difference as the performance was more limited by the slow CPU (eg. team battles with heavy particle effects). This was on an ultrathin laptop (not sure if there was throttling issues), you're setup will have much more thermal headroom.

Sounds good. I'm going to look into both options more and see what I come up with. I just need something a little more powerful for vm's but it still games well enough for what I play. The smaller the better is really what it comes downs too.

 

[chameleoneel]

Performance is probably roughly like a 5750 or GT 650m, so you can look at benchmarks of those to get an idea.

No reason to guess about performance, there are plenty of benchmarks/articles featuring Iris Pro 5200

The i5-4570R with the iris pro HD 5200 is much faster than the xbox360/ps3 class consoles. The problem is of course last gen console games were targeting 720p (or even less) while 1080p is roughly 2.25 more pixels and corresponding performance. So it can't quite flawlessly do last gen console graphics at 1080p across the board.

An i5 is certainly a powerful CPU. However, modern games are GPU limited, which is why I said depending upon the game, the Iris Pro 5200 will feel like a PS3.5, at best. Anandtech for example, Shows the Iris Pro 2 is good for 1600x900 in some games. However, you'll be trading framerate for resolution. Anything higher than medium quality is usually unrealistic, as the shader architecture here gets overwhelmed quickly. Bumping up to 1600x900 often results in halving the framerate.

720p is going to be the best experience across the board, with some games able to go a bit higher, if you don't mind hovering closer to 30fps.

My overarching point, however, is that the Brix is not priced very well. You can build something better for gaming, for a similar pricepoint. The Brix is certainly good for older, simpler games like Counterstrike. But I don't think it's smart to spend $500 on a Counterstrike machine. Custom build and get a little bit of everything machine, for the same money.