Installing Windows on an Xbox One APU: The Chuwi Aerobox Review
by Dr. Ian Cutress on December 24, 2020 9:45 AM ESTGaming Performance
So there’s going to be a lot of interest as to how this performs in our gaming tests, given the heritage of the processor. However, as previously mentioned, there are three things that are going to be against us here.
First is the driver stack. On a console the top to bottom software stack is optimized for both performance and ease of use. Game engine creators and game developers can both work to a fixed set of hardware, and take advantage of how close to the metal that software stack can be; this is why we get such great looking games as the lifecycle of a console continues. By contrast, our system has a straight forward version of Windows 10. It is as generic as it gets, which means optimizations will be on a much lower scale.
Second are the drivers themselves. There is no up-to-date solution here; our system shipped with beta versions of Adrenaline 17.12, which indicates we have December 2017 drivers. None of AMD’s regular driver packages will recognize this system as it uses a custom embedded processor. Some games will refuse to run because the drivers are so old. As a result we’re stuck in the services with a flat tire and no rescue in sight.
Third is the lack of additional eSRAM to help with memory bandwidth. The Xbox One and One S consoles had 32 MB of SRAM plus DDR3, while the Xbox One X had no SRAM but GDDR5. The A9-9820 APU has neither, instead relying on DDR3, and slow DDR3 at that. Memory bandwidth would appear to be a very obvious bottleneck in this regard, assuming that the graphics cores have plenty to work on.
Gaming Results
With all that being said, here are our numbers, and we’re putting them up against some of the very basic competition from our database. Perhaps the best modern comparison point will be to the Ryzen 5 2400G, however we also have a Ryzen V1605B here, which is a 12 W embedded Zen processor with Vega 8 graphics. On the Intel side, I have the Core i5-6500U, a mid-range Skylake mobile processor used in many mini-PCs.
All of our games here are running at 720p minimum settings or lower, and the numbers will show you why.
Benchmark Results | |||||
AnandTech | Chuwi Aerobox |
Ryzen 5 2400G |
Ryzen V1605B |
Core i5 6500U |
|
Frames Per Second Averages | |||||
Civilization 6 | 480p Min | 24.4 | 91.2 | 52.9 | 35.7 |
Final Fantasy XV | 720p Med | 20.1 | 26.8 | 14.2 | 35.4 |
World of Tanks | 768p Min | 144.7 | 223.8 | 141.1 | 165.8 |
Borderlands 3 | 360p VLow | 31.3 | 70.8 | 42.9 | 29.0 |
Far Cry 5 | 360p Low | 31.5 | 58.0 | 25.5 | 19.0 |
GTA 5 | 720p Low | 37.8 | 83.0 | 52.9 | 32.8 |
95th Frame Time Percentiles (shown as FPS) | |||||
Civilization 6 | 480p Min | 17.1 | 57.6 | 34.8 | 26.8 |
Final Fantasy XV | 720p Med | 17.1 | 22.6 | 11.3 | 6.8 |
World of Tanks | 768p Min | 40.2 | 130.7 | 84.5 | 115.2 |
Borderlands 3 | 360p VLow | 24.2 | 55.2 | 32.7 | 22.3 |
Far Cry 5 | 360p Low | 26.0 | 49.0 | 21.5 | 16.0 |
GTA 5 | 720p Low | 25.4 | 56.6 | 38.3 | 23.3 |
In games like Civilization where the CPU matters, and in some of the other numbers, the poor performing Jaguar cores show how bad it can get – that low World of Tanks percentile comes into playm scoring only 40 FPS. If it weren’t for the CPU, the A9-9820 would be comfortably ahead of the i5-6500U in all of the tests. Games that didn’t run due to driver issues included F1 2019, Gears Tactics, and Red Dead Redemption.
From a personal experience perspective, I set myself up with a wired Xbox controller, and I very comfortably played several hours of Borderlands 3 single player at 720p Ultra Low settings. Frame rates hovered around the 30s, dipping into the 20s during firefights, or up in the 40s when walking through open spaces or in the towns.
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StuntFriar - Saturday, December 26, 2020 - link
Also worth pointing out that it was a multi-platform engine, which ran pretty well on a contemporary Core 2 Quad / Core i3 and budget DX9 GPUs.The_Assimilator - Thursday, December 24, 2020 - link
Why would anyone want to build a 2020 system with these 2016 processors, which were garbage back then and are even more so now?Qasar - Thursday, December 24, 2020 - link
heh, why not ??brucethemoose - Thursday, December 24, 2020 - link
> You can get the board shipped for $125JfromImaginstuff - Friday, December 25, 2020 - link
Oh hmmmmm "Just because" seems reason enoughJfromImaginstuff - Friday, December 25, 2020 - link
As an addendum, it makes no sense, that was just sarcasmHifihedgehog - Tuesday, December 29, 2020 - link
For an arcade cabinet, maybe? :) Heck, when arcade cabinet building became big in the early 2000s, many people used Xbox motherboards. Using this would be very reminiscent of that. For a $120 board, it is not bad, and would emulation will be restricted to Dreamcast era and earlier given the slowness of the CPU, it offers more a different flavor of flexibility from your typical RetroPie system.lmcd - Thursday, December 24, 2020 - link
The same reason why this is available is also why it's so bad. DDR3 was a bottleneck even in low end GPUs at the time, let alone a midrange unit like in the Xbox One. Doubling memory bandwidth would probably get 35% performance gains or higher. Obviously that would be complicated on this platform.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, December 24, 2020 - link
Wasn't there a console-like system on the market in China that was based on a custom-built Ryzen-based APU, and used GDDR memory? I believe that even runs Win10.brucethemoose - Thursday, December 24, 2020 - link
Yep:https://www.anandtech.com/show/13381/subor-z-conso...
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-...
And then the team supposedly got disbanded: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-05-15-subo...
Both publications got their hands on the physical hardware, but they never got a chance to thoroughly bench it, as far as I can tell.
I'm suprised it wasn't mention here, unless I missed it.