Event Coverage

Early Performance Benchmarks of Intel's Latest Bay Trail Processor

By Dr. Jimmy Tang - 12 Sep 2013

Early Performance Benchmarks of Intel's Latest Bay Trail Processor

As Intel is getting closer to releasing the successor to Clover Trail, we managed to get some quality hands-on time with Intel's Bay Trail prototypes. These new tablets are not commercial models but they are full functioning reference devices that should give us a pretty good overview on the level of performance we can expect to get from tablets based on this new processor.

The tablets are based on the following specifications :-

  • Intel Atom processor Z3770 (Bay Trail-T)
  • Processor frequency clocked at up to 2.4GHz
  • 2GB DDR3L-1067 memory
  • Display resolution at 2560 x 1440
  • Runs Android 4.2.2 or Windows 8.1 (RTM)

We did not get much time with these tablets, so we did not manage to run the full suite of benchmarks on them. However, what we have below are more or less adequate to give us an early indication on Bay Trail's performance as compared with other competing devices. 

 

WebXPRT Benchmark

Product Overall Score
Bay Trail (Windows 8.1, IE) 370
Bay Trail (Windows 8.1, Chrome) 547
Bay Trail (Android 4.2.2, Chrome) 438
iPad (4th Gen) 178
Nexus 7 (Android 4.2.2) 183
Samsung ATIV SmartPC XE500T1C (Clover Trail, Windows 8.0, IE) 217

Using WebXPRT, which is a web-based benchmark that measures common tasks we perform on tablets, we can see that Bay Trail is significantly faster than most other tablets found in the market today. We did not manage to run any comparison tests with more updated devices that use Tegra 4 or Snapdragon 800 processors, but compared with previous generation products like Nexus 7 (Tegra 3) and iPad 4, we can see that Bay Trail is way ahead in terms of performance. Even the previous generation Clover Trail tablet from Samsung had better overall score than the iPad and Nexus.

It's also interesting to note that browsers do make a difference. This is because WebXPRT's benchmark consists of four HTML5 workloads and we all know that IE isn't exactly the best browser for HTML5 scripts. This roughly explains why the overall score for WebXPRT on Chrome was higher than that generated using IE.

 

SunSpider 1.0.1 Benchmark (lower is better)

Product Result (ms)
Bay Trail (Windows 8.1, IE) 328.1
Bay Trail (Windows 8.1, Chrome) 464.5
Bay Trail (Android 4.2.2, Chrome) 585.2
Samsung ATIV SmartPC XE500T1C (Clover Trail, Windows 8.0, IE) 705.8
iPad (4th Gen) 784.9
Nexus 7 (Android 4.2.2) 1572.9
Sony Xperia Z Ultra (Android 4.2.2, Snapdragon 800) 766.8

We use SunSpider benchmark quite extensively to test the device's Javascript performance and it is fairly accurate in measuring the processor's relative performance. SunSpider was also recently updated to version 1.0.1, so we were not able to compare with more devices but what we have above are more or less adequate to show Bay Trail's improved performance. Compared with the Clover Trail, the new Bay Trail tablet is running more than two times faster than the previous generation. And compared with the iPad, Nexus 7 and even the new Xperia Z Ultra running the latest Snapdragon 800 processor, Bay Trail's performance is still churning through the benchmark at impressive speeds. Although the Android version of Bay Trail is running slower than its Windows 8.1 equivalent, it is still comparatively faster than all the other devices compared here. According to Intel, they still have more tuning to perform on the x86 version of Android 4.2.2, so we can expect the final shipping version of any Bay Trail Android devices to perform better than what we've recorded here.

 

FutureMark 3DMark 1.1 (Ice Storm Extreme)

Product Result (ms)
Bay Trail (Windows 8.1) 8171
Bay Trail (Android 4.2.2) 8398
iPad (4th Gen) 6767
Nexus 7 2013 (Android 4.3) 6973
Nexus 7 (Android 4.2.2) 1911

Finally, we have 3DMark graphics performance for the Bay Trail compared with other competing devices like the iPad and Nexus 7. As you can see above, Bay Trail leads with impressive scores. Although we would've loved to compare it with newer devices based on Snapdragon 800 and Tegra 4, we can see that the new Bay Trail is quite the gaming workhorse although it's only based on Intel's 7th generation graphics (similar to Sandy Bridge). So if you've been comfortable playing games on the iPad or Nexus 7 devices, imagine where Bay Trail will bring you with that kind of performance.

 

Conclusion

Although the scores you see above are just preliminary results obtained with Intel's new Bay Trail reference design, the initial numbers seen here are already quite promising. We think Intel has just shown the industry that the new Atom Z3000 series processor (Bay Trail) is a serious contender in the tablet category and we believe they are now in a very favorable position to give its ARM rivals some serious competition. 

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