[cyborg]

"ASRock Beebox Dual Channel Memory Smokes Other Single Channel Systems"
"It’s a common belief that a system’s video playback ability is linked to graphics cards, chips with integrated graphics, or perhaps even memory capacity. Chipsets such as Intel’s N3000 series claim to support 4K playback and High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265), but when ASRock’s research and development team got their hands dirty on building Beebox, the results weren’t as promising as expected so they decided to dig deeper. After several attempts and hours of testing, the conclusion that smooth 4K video playback also relied on dual channel memory came into clear view."
http://www.legitreviews.com/asrock-enter...-pc_166170


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEG3xYoct38

[fritsch]

^^ yeah. That's what MattDevo and I also found out when benchmarking chromeboxes ...

dual channel: 4k@60 possible, without 4k@30 only.

[Matt Devo]

^^ yeah. That's what MattDevo and I also found out when benchmarking chromeboxes ...

dual channel: 4k@60 possible, without 4k@30 only.

for both Haswell and Broadwell mobile Celerons, you need dual channel memory to even approach 1080p60 h264 playback; without it, ~43fps was the limit IIRC

[fritsch]

This disqualifies most of those boxes, yeah. and perhaps the 2 core Beebox will be faster than all the others, when it comes to hevc, 4k and 1080p60

but we will find out soon.

[oWarchild]

Good work from ASRock in informing people about this (and promoting their product). So far the only other Braswell box with dual channel memory is the Asus VivoMini UN45 / UN45H. My preference goes for the UN45H which features the quad core N3150 even though it's not fanless. All the other Braswell boxes are single channel unfortunately...

[Nekromantik]

According to this it will support 4k 30 so no hope for 60fps
http://hexus.net/tech/news/systems/84002...standards/

[oWarchild]

Hmmm... it says "The ASRock Beebox with two 2GB DDR3 memory DIMMs installed was sufficient for smooth 4K video playback with a framerate around 30fps." but I couldn't find anything saying it couldn't support 60fps. Did I miss something?

PS: one thing that does worry me is that the ASRock N3700-ITX motherboard uses a DisplayPort 1.1a (max resolution: 4K (3840x2160) @ 30Hz) and I fear they did the same for the Beebox. I hope to be proved wrong.

[Nekromantik]

The article states
"After some testing by ASRock's research and development team it decided that dual-channel memory was the answer. The ASRock Beebox with two 2GB DDR3 memory DIMMs installed was sufficient for smooth 4K video playback with a framerate around 30fps."

Wont know for sure until we see reviews.
But it has planted doubt in my mind so I went ahead with Nvidia Shield.

[fritsch]

According to this it will support 4k 30 so no hope for 60fps
http://hexus.net/tech/news/systems/84002...standards/

Let's wait until we are finished with the EGL rewrite and the zero copy display. This design will be linux only and I have high hopes, that if the decoder is fast enough, that display can also be made working.

[incubus]

Good work from ASRock in informing people about this (and promoting their product). So far the only other Braswell box with dual channel memory is the Asus VivoMini UN45 / UN45H. My preference goes for the UN45H which features the quad core N3150 even though it's not fanless. All the other Braswell boxes are single channel unfortunately...

Yeah I tend to agree with you on the Asus with N3150.
BTW, still hoping that Intel has not made the mistake putting only one memory module on their NUCs...

[omnium]

...download the 4K HEVC (H.265) version and test your own computer via MPC-HC media player (Press CTL-J to check frame rate): http://66.226.78.22/downloadsite/beebox%204k.mkv...

[oWarchild]

Interesting observation from FanlessTech regarding the video ASRock posted:

We don't know where to start. Bogus claims (Braswell standard limited to single channel memory and dual displays), "competitor's system" is their own N3700-ITX (ironically a dual channel memory and triple displays motherboard), horrible production values, laughable sound editing at 1:58 and 2:10. This doesn't help your cause in any way, ASRock.

[fritsch]

But yeah - asrock has a point. Everybody can measure this. Speed with single channel memory is halfed in case of GPU decoding (when considering 4k). Depending on the "implementation" it does not matter (e.g no real life impact) 1080p60 - as we have checked yesterday on MattDevo's chromebox.

On my BSW, i can play 3840x2160 at 30 progressive fps easily - 60p is a no go (I talk of the source material, both would be displayed at 60hz).

Edit: I could just remove one of the memory modules and retest -> will report back, mo.

[oWarchild]

Thanks @fritsch!

Which braswell are you using BTW?

[fritsch]

Oki - on my BSW, there is no difference (!).

4k@30p with lanczos3 downscaling -> perfectly, no matter if it's 2gb memory or 2 * 2gb memory.
4k@60p is unwatchable (drops and skips) no matter if scaling was chosen to be nearest neighbour.

We don't have HEVC support implemented yet, but want to do that in ffmpeg (vaapi). So let's see - perhaps they have just tested an ultra silly player :-) which might be possible. I run a new rewrite on this bsw, which does not need to copy the decoded surfaces to output. It uses a zero copy approach, where decoding data and render data are shared for display.

I have a: http://geizhals.de/asrock-n3150b-itx-90-...73703.html - I only run Linux on it, so can't comment on windows, but the player highly matters. So it's through out possible, that they used some shitty player, that needed much resources, so that it was only possible to play that stuff when dual channel was in there. One does not know.