CPU replacement in Sony VAIO UX

Sony VAIO UX is one of the most outstanding, elegant, and powerful UMPC of the first epoch. Despite the quite wide range of models in the UX series and quite high prices, there were no dual-core versions of the device. However, the device itself is 100% ready to work with a dual-core processor. Therefore it’s relatively easy to make a custom upgrade.

The gallery below represents the process of CPU replacement: the original Intel® Core™ Solo U1500 is replaced by Intel® Core™2 Duo U7700 (dual-core, 64-bit). The modding was made by a professional master Sergey (aka Freeqwer). Here is a video from Sergey of a similar modding made for another item: https://youtu.be/OcuwCzd7C0I.

According to my benchmarks, Core™2 Duo U7700 is actually two times faster than Core™ Solo U1500 when the application utilizes both cores. The new CPU has increased the power consumption of the device by 25% and the cooling system is able to handle the extra power without the device overheating.

Sabrent Rocket NVME SSD inside One-Netbook A1

Sabrent Rocket is one of the fastest NVME SSD series in the formfactor of M.2 2242. According to the manufacturer, "its speed performance can reach up to 2500MB/s read and 2100MB/s write" (ref).
Here is what you can expect from this SSD inserted into the One-Netbook A1 handheld computer:

It’s worth mentioning that the default One-Netbook SSD shows very similar performance.

So there is no reason to replace SSD in order to get higher speed. The default SSD is pretty much the best you can achieve.

Benchmarking UMPCs of the second epoch

Introduction

"An ultra-mobile PC (ultra-mobile personal computer or UMPC) is a miniature version of a pen computer, a class of laptop whose specifications were launched by Microsoft and Intel in spring 2006." (c) Wikipedia. That was the dawn of the first UMPC epoch. This epoch did not last too long, because in the early 2010s major UMPC manufacturers ended its product lines. Few years later new manufacturers emerged and recreated UMPC market. The major one was the Chinese company GPD. GPD started the second UMPC epoch by releasing gaming handheld GPD Win in 2016 and the general purpose device GPD Pocket in 2017. Since then a whole bunch of UMPC devices were released. In this article we will compare performance of various UMPC devices from the second epoch: including the very first GPD Win and the most powerful UMPC up do the date – One-Netbook OneGx1 Pro.

Disclaimer. This article is not a comprehensive performance analysis of the 2-nd era UMPCs. All the test items are taken from my collection. Therefore the number of test items is quite limited. In case I add any new corresponding items to my collection, this benchmark survey might be extended as well.

Testing methodology

The following programs were used to test CPU, Memory, Disk performance:

  • Geekbench version 5.3.1;
  • PassMark Performance Test 10.0 build 1010;
  • CrystalDiskMark version 8.0.1;
  • CPU-Z version 1.95;

The following programs were used to test 3D performance:

3DMark with default settings. Version details:

  • Time Spy version 1.2
  • Fire Strike version 1.1
  • Wild Life version 1.0
  • SystemInfo version 5.37.888.0

Unigine Heaven Benchmark at the resolution of 1280×720; version 4.0.

Test setup descriptions

GPD Pocket

Processor: Intel Atom x7-Z8750
BIOS version: AMI 5.11 8/7/2017
OS: Windows 10 Professional Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363
Intel HD Graphics 405 driver version: 20.19.15.4444

GPD Win

Processor: Intel Atom x7-Z8750
BIOS version: AMI 5.11, 25.05.2017
OS: Windows 10 Professional Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363
Intel HD Graphics 405 driver version: 20.19.15.4549

GPD MicroPC

CPU: Intel Celeron N4100
BIOS version: AMI 02.07.2019
OS: Windows 10 Professional Version 10.0.17763 Build 17763
Intel UHD Graphics 600 driver version: 26.20.100.7584
TDP: 10W

One-Netbook A1

Processor: Intel Core m3-8100Y
BIOS version: AMI 5.12 12.09.2020
OS: Windows 10 Professional Version 10.0.19042 Build 19042
Intel UHD Graphics 615 driver version: 27.20.100.8681

One-Netbook OneMix 2s

Processor: Intel Core m3-8100Y
BIOS version: AMI 5.12 04.03.2019
OS: Windows 10 Professional Version 10.0.19042 Build 19042
Intel UHD Graphics 600 driver version: 26.20.100.7584

One-Netbook OneGx1 Pro

Processor: Intel Core i7-1160G7
BIOS version: AMI 5.19 17.12.2020
OS: Windows 10 Professional Version 10.0.19042 Build 19042
Intel Iris Xe Graphics driver version: 27.20.100.8680

CPU & Memory performance

PassMark Performance Test results
Geekbench test results
CPU-Z test results

The 11th generation Intel Core mobile processors (codename Tiger Lake) is a substantial breakthrough. It’s hard to believe that Core i7-1160G7 is faster than the high-end desktop processor Core i7-4790k, which was discontinued in 2017.

SSD performance

CrystalDiskMark test results

It is worth noting the variation in write speed across devices. Write speed of premium OneGx1 is significantly lower than the write speed of A1.

3D performance

3DMark test results
Unigine Heaven test results

Few notes:

  1. Performance of Iris Xe is just outstanding.
  2. Tiger Lake supports Thunderbolt 4, which allows to connect gGPU to the UMPC. eGPU can improve 3D performance of OneGx1 Pro by at least 4 times. See details here: Benchmarking OneGx1 Pro with eGPU.
  3. Performance of A1 is significantly lower than performance of OneMix 2s, which is based on the same Intel Core m3-8100Y.

Conclusion

Since GPD Win performance of UMPCs has increased in many times in every single aspect.
Tigre Lake architecture is an outstanding breakthrough in both CPU and GPU performance.

Benchmarking OneGx1 Pro with eGPU

I connected EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FOUNDERS EDITION to One-Netbook OneGx1 Pro via the following eGPU box: Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 550.

Here are the main results:

  1. eGPU can improve 3D performance of OneGx1 Pro by at least 4 times.
  2. Performance of the video card inserted in the desktop is significantly higher than performance of the same card connected via eGPU box.
  3. Performance of eGPU is significantly higher when the image is displayed on an external monitor.

More benchmarks of OneGx1 Pro are availavle here.

GPD MicroPC arrived

Overall impression

MicroPC looks very robust. The build quality is quite impressive. Chinese companies definitely improve their skills. The keyboard is one of the most comfortable handheld keyboards I’ve ever used. The size of the device is significantly smaller than size of similar devices from UMPC era (see comparison photos below).

In general I really like the device. I can’t mention any disadvantages so far.

I did’t like the original GPD case, because it’s designed to fit much larger devices (GPD Pocket, probably). So I ended up using the FlipStart bag instead, because I have an extra one and the MicroPC fits perfectly.

Benchmarks

The performance of MicroPC is significantly higher than the performance of Microsoft Surface 3.

DOOM 3 benchmark (1280×720, graphic quality set to high, timedemo demo1)

Device FPS (1st run) FPS (2nd run) FPS (3rd run) Average FSB
GPD MicroPC 10W 39.5 44.6 47.0 43,7
Microsoft Surface 3 30.5 31.7 34.1 32,1

It’s also worth mentioning that Surface 3 is unable to sustain this perofrmance during long period of time. Without active cooling Surface 3 starts throttling and the performance decreases to 23-24 FPS.

Benchmarking Toshiba Libretto 70CT

Introduction

Toshiba Libretto 70CT is based on Intel Mobile Pentium MMX 120 Mhz (sSpec number SL2JS). Lets compare this this processor with a desktop Pentium MMX of the same time:

Model number Lithography Frequency L1 Cache FSB TDP sSpec number
Mobile Pentium MMX 120 0.35 µm 120 Mhz 16+16 KiB 60 MT/s 4.2 W SL2JS
Pentium MMX 166 0.35 µm 166 Mhz 16+16 KiB 66 MT/s 13.1 W SL239, SL27H

Despite being built using the same lithography technology as the desktop Pentium MMX processors (0.35 µm) and having comparatively close frequency (the desktop processor has 38% higher frequency), SL2JS has significantly smaller TDP (the TDP of the desktop processors is 3.12 times higher, than the TDP of SL2JS).

Because of this fact I became curious whether the performance SL2JS will be identical to the performance of a desktop MMX processor with the same frequency of 120 Mhz. In order to find this out I prepared a test setup and executed few CPU benchmarks. The benchmark results are presented below.

Testing methodology

The following programs were used to test CPU performance:

  • SiSoft Sandra version 2001.0.7.10;
  • PassMark Performance Test 5.0 build 1038;
  • CPUBENCH version 4.0.0.6;
  • Speedsys version 4.78;
  • Landmark System Speed Test version 6.00;
  • Norton System Information 8.0;
  • Quake version 1.0.6. Settings: resolution is 320×200, disabled sound, disabled cdaudio, demo1 used as demo map. Full config is available here.

All tests performed after suitable warm-up period.

Setup #1 description

Toshiba Libretto 70CT

Device: Toshiba Libretto 70CT
BIOS version: 6.40
CPU: Mobile Pentium MMX 120 (SL2JS)
RAM: 32Mb (including genuine 16Mb extension module)
Video: Chips & Technology F65550 1Mb
OS: Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222 A

Setup #2 description

Intel Pentium MMX 166

Motherboard: Lucky Star 5I-VX1F
BIOS version: 4.51PG
CPU: There is no desktop Pentium MMX clocked at 120 Mhz. Therefore a downclocked Pentium MMX 166 was used (clocked at 120 Mhz with 60 MHz FSB). There were used two samples with different spec numbers: SL239 and SL27H.
RAM: Hitachi 32Mb SDRAM 81117822a-100fn
Video: S3 Trio64V2/DX 2 Mb
PSU: Linkworld LP12SWITCH 200W
OS: Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222 A

Test results

Landmark System Speed test results

Speedsys test results

Norton System Information test results

As we can see, DOS benchmarks didn’t detect any difference. However, Windows benchmarks show a different picture.

PassMark Performance Test results

SiSoft Sandra test results

CPUBENCH test results

In most tests the SL2JS is behind its desktop competitors. In some test the gap is as big as 49%, but the average difference is only 10%.

I also decided to execute one additional test with Quake. However, the results of this benchmark can not be linked directly to CPU. This benchmark is highly dependent on video output and there are different video chip used in the test
setups. Anyway, here is the result.

PassMark Performance Test results

Conclusion

The presumption was confirmed. The performance of SL2JS is not identical to the performance of a desktop MMX processor with the same frequency. However, the average difference in performance is not very significant: it’s just 10%.

Sony UX1XRN benchmarks

Disclaimer

This article is not a comprehensive performance analysis of Sony UX1XRN. The goal is to find a comparable PC configuration for gaming. And we will mostly compare performances of CPUs and GPUs.

Testing methodology

The following programs were used to test CPU and Memory performance:

  • SiSoft Sandra version 2001.0.7.10;
  • PassMark Performance Test 8.0 build 1054;
  • PCMark 2002 build 100;
  • Unreal Tournament version 436.
    • Settings: software rendering, resolution: 800×600, color depth: 32 bit, graphics level: high; demo file – UTBench.
    • Metric: Avg FPS.

The following programs were used to test Direct3D performance:

  • 3DMark2000, version 1.1, build 340. Settings: default values except color depth and resolution (mentioned in the results below);
  • 3DMark2001 SE, build 330. Settings: default values except screen resolution (mentioned in the results below).

The following programs were used to test OpenGL performance:

  • Quake III: Arena version 1.32c. Settings: color depth (32 bit), various resolutions (mentioned in the results below).

All tests performed after suitable warm-up period.

Setup #1 description

Device: Sony VAIO VGN-UX1XRN
CPU #1 (original): Intel® Core™ Solo U1500
CPU #2 (resoldered): Intel® Core™2 Duo U7700
BIOS version: R0101N2
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3 5.1.2600
Intel GMA driver version: 6.14.10.4926

This device has been tested with two versions of CPU:

  1. The original CPU from the manufacturer – Intel® Core™ Solo U1500 (32-bit, single-core, 1.33 Ghz);
  2. The manually resoldered CPU – Intel® Core™2 Duo U7700 (64-bit, dual-core, 1.33 Ghz).

Default GPU clock rate in UX1XRN is lower than it’s "true" value (400 Mhz, according to the specifications). In order to achieve maximum 3D performance I used GMABooser version 2.1. Technically I would not call this overclocking, because we don’t exceed the clock rate and voltage values from the chip specifications.

Thus all 3D benchmarks on UX1XRN were performed twice: with default GPU clock rate and with GPU clocked at 400Mhz.

Setup #2 description

PC setup

Motherboard: Shuttle AK38N V1.1, BIOS AK38S003
RAM: Samsung M312L2923CZ3-CB3 1Gb DDR PC2700 CL2.5 ECC
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 1,54Ghz (used in all benchmarks), AMD Athlon XP 1500+ 1,33Ghz (used only in CPU benchmarks)
PSU: Zalman ZM1000-EBT
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3 5.1.2600

In order to find a comparable discrete PC video card I used seven cards based on
Nvidia chips:

  • Inno3D MX(200) 64MB Nvidia GeForce2 MX200 Core@176Mhz, Memory@166Mhz 64bit;
  • NoName 32M Nvidia GeForce2 MX400 Core@200Mhz, Memory@150Mhz 128bit;
  • SUMA Platinum 32M Nvidia GeForce2 MX400 Core@200Mhz, Memory@183Mhz 128bit
  • ASUS V7100 Pro 64M Nvidia GeForce2 MX400 Core@200Mhz, Memory@333Mhz 64bit;
  • ASUS V8170MAGIC/64M Rev. 3.0 Nvidia GeForce4 MX420 Core@250Mhz, Memory@333Mhz 128bit;
  • NoName 64M Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 Core@250Mhz, Memory@513Mhz.
  • ASUS V9520/TD Rev. 1.02 128M Nvidia GeForce FX5200 Core@250Mhz, Memory@405Mhz;

Video cards

Nvidia drivers version (same for all test samples): 93.71

CPU & Memory performance

PassMark Performance Test results
PCMark 2002 test results
SiSoft Sandra test results
Unreal Tournament software rendering test results

AMD K7 architecture was a substantial breakthrough, which provided higher performance per Mhz than we had with Intel’s Pentium processors. Taking that fact into account, I was doubt, whether a mobile processor Core Solo U1500 is able to compete with AMD K7 at the same clock rate. As we can see now, U1500 has actually much higher performance per Mhz. In all test scenarios except one (PCMark CPU test) U1500 (which is clocked at 1,33Ghz) scores even higher than 1,54Ghz AMD K7. PCMark CPU test results are practically equal.

There is also significant difference in memory performance. Memory in UX (DDR2 400Mhz) is approximately two times faster than DDR 333.

U1500 shows outstanding results in the UT software rendering. I supposed that the drastic difference is caused by RAM. So I replaced DDR 333 with DDR 400 (NCPD6AUDR-50M26) in the PC setup and ran benchmark one more time. The result with DDR 400 was even more frustrating: 28,6 fps.

Core2 Duo U7700 is actually 2 times faster than U1500 when the test program utilizes both cores.

PCMark has failed to run the tests on Core2 Duo U7700 (the program crashes all the time).

Since Athlon 1500+ is significantly slower than Core Solo U1500, I decided to use the Athlon 1800+ in all 3D performance benchmarks.

3D performance

3DMark2000 16 bit test results
3DMark2000 32 bit test results
3DMark2001 test results
Quake 3 test results

According to the results, GMA performance is somewhere in between the fastest version of MX400 (SUMA Platinum) and the MX420.

GMA 950 at default GPU clock rate scores closer to

  • MX420: in 5 tests;
  • MX400: in 7 tests.

GMA 950 clocked at 400Mhz GPU is closer to

  • MX420: in 10 tests;
  • MX400: in 2 tests.

The fastest version of MX400 is the closest PC alternative to GMA 950 running in UX1XRN at default clock rate. But when we boost GMA 950 to 400Mhz, the MX420 becomes the closest PC alternative.

GeForce4 MX420 chip

Power consumption

Measurements of power consumption

I was curious what’s the actual power consumption of the devices. UX1XRN consumes significantly more power than I expected.

Sony UX works fine with dual-core 10W CPU. The CPU replacement increases the consumption of the device by only a quarter.

Conclusion

Athlon XP 1800+ with GeForce2 MX400 is quite close to Sony UX1XRN in terms of CPU and 3D performance. Boosting GMA 950 up to 400Mhz makes it a bit faster. In this case the GPU runs approximately as good as GeForce4 MX420.

Cortex-A8 vs Coppermine

Samples description

I made a few benchmarks of two devices:

  1. The Pandora device (based on OMAP3530).
  2. A PC with 256 Mb SDR RAM and one of the following CPUs: Pentium 3 and
    Celeron.

Both systems used the same gcc-4.4.3 and glibc-2.11.2.
Whole systems were compiled with the following flags:

PC flags:

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

Global USE includes sse and mmxю ffmpeg’s use uncludes mmxext.

OMAP flags:

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a8 -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=softfp -ftree-vectorize -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

OMAP’s DSP was not used.

Legend

  • OMAP@600 is OMAP3530 running at 600Mhz (default for Pandora).
  • OMAP@850 is OMAP3530 overclocked to 850Mhz.
  • P3@600/133 is Pentium 3 EB (the Coppermine core) running at 600 Mhz (FSB clocked at 133Mhz).
  • Cel@600/66 is Celeron (the Coppermine-128 core) running at 600 Mhz (FSB clocked at 66Mhz).

Compilation

I want to emphasize that it is not a performance benchmark, because compilation is done for different architectures (ARM and x86). It is a benchmark of one particular task, which is essential for gentoo users.

package OMAP@600 OMAP@850 P3@600/133 Cel@600/66
binutils-2.20.1, m:s 37:50 28:45 20:06 28:23
glibc-2.11.2, m:s 177:27 138:19 104:09 145:16

OMAP3530 overclocked to 850 Mhz is very close to Celeron running at 600 Mhz.

Nbench

Nbench is a synthetic performance test.

The used version: nbench-2.2.3-r1

index OMAP@600 OMAP@850 P3@600/133 Cel@600/66
memory 3.040 4.364 2.811 2.745
integer 3.073 4.365 2.761 2.751
floating-point 0.533 0.761 5.477 5.268

Nbench does not show any difference between Pentium 3 and Celeron, which is strange.

MPlayer

MPlayer was used to measure video decoding time.
The used version: mplayer-1.0_rc4_p20091026-r1
Command line:

mplayer -benchmark -vo null -nosound input_file

Input files: Big Buck Bunny at 480p in MPEG4, H.264 and Theora/Vorbis.

codec OMAP@600 OMAP@850 P3@600/133 Cel@600/66
FFmpeg H.264, s 546.3 409.5 221.1 369.9
FFmpeg MSMPEG-4, s 175.3 128.1 98.4 130.2
Theora, s 497.9 367.8 256.2 322.7

FFmpeg

FFmpeg was used for encoding MPEG4 to Theora/Vorbis.
The used version: ffmpeg-0.5_p20373
Command line:

time ffmpeg -i input_file.avi -vcodec libtheora -acodec libvorbis \
-vb 1024k -s 640:360 output_file.ogv

Input files: Big Buck Bunny, Sintel trailer.

movie OMAP@600 OMAP@850 P3@600/133 Cel@600/66
big buck bunny, m:s 143:21 102:38 43:45 47:51
sintel trailer, m:s 13:39 9:48 3:59 4:30

Compression

The used tools: bzip2-1.0.5-r1, gzip-1.4
Command lines:

time bzip2 big_buck_bunny_480p_stereo.avi
time gzip big_buck_bunny_480p_stereo.avi

Input files: big_buck_bunny_480p_stereo.avi

compressor OMAP@600 OMAP@850 P3@600/133 Cel@600/66
bzip2, m:s 6:48 5:17 6:08 7:45
gzip, m:s 1:55 1:39 0:53 1:42

Hashing

The used tools: coreutils-8.5
Command lines:

time md5 big_buck_bunny_480p_stereo.avi
time sha256 big_buck_bunny_480p_stereo.avi
time sha512 big_buck_bunny_480p_stereo.avi

Input files: big_buck_bunny_480p_stereo.avi

algorithm OMAP@600 OMAP@850 P3@600/133 Cel@600/66
md5, s 2.45 1.18 1.95 2.15
sha256, s 7.20 5.17 8.30 8.68
sha512, m:s 1:10 0:43 0:29 0:31

JavaScript

The used tools: midori-0.2.6, webkit-gtk-1.1.15.4, V8 version 5, SunSpider-0.9.

suite OMAP@600 OMAP@850 P3@600/133 Cel@600/66
V8 57.4 80.2 305 253
SunSpider, ms 23053.8 18327.0 4744.6 5520.4