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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osx86h3avy - Saturday, December 26, 2020 - link
I didn't read all comments so someone may have mentioned this but if they used a smaller box and added quad port gigabit nic if possible it could make a neat platform for pfsense router...I dunno though I mean not if it runs at 150w but perhaps with the right nic they could get that down...or perhaps add more Sata ports for a cheap nas???....other than that it seems like more of a curiosity than a real,option....and really, there are already so many far cheaper better solutions for those that it doesn't make much sense unless they can cost out somewhere like with say just 4gb onbaord mem, Emmc storage, no audio, etc., but now its just a whole other beast and all for the sake of just not throwing away decade old silicon which it seems is the best thing to do with these....phoenix_rizzen - Saturday, December 26, 2020 - link
The table on the first page doesn't match up with any of the text describing the APU in the Aerobox.CPU and GPU specs are incorrect.
regsEx - Sunday, December 27, 2020 - link
And they wondering why CB2077 is 20 fps on that ancient slow hardware. It's actually doing very good on that hardware, as they said.kaidenshi - Sunday, December 27, 2020 - link
"The concept of the modern console built on the same x86 architecture as desktop and gaming PCs came into effect with the 8th Generation of consoles – we’re talking the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One, both of which used the semi-custom services of AMD to build specific processors for these machines."Ahem, the original Xbox would like a word...
Mitch89 - Tuesday, December 29, 2020 - link
Was thinking the same thing. Original Xbox used a Pentium III running a modded version of Windows.artk2219 - Sunday, December 27, 2020 - link
It may have taken a little less time if you had used a toothpick to mechanically remove most of the paste before going to town with alcohol. Either way, i haven't seen a paste job that bad in a while, although Dell does a similarly bad job more often than not.Kuhar - Monday, December 28, 2020 - link
Can you please add comparison to Apple M1. FPS should be about on par when using rosetta, windows and heavy-duty games, right?cheapcomputers - Monday, December 28, 2020 - link
That was interesting. As soon as I started reading, I wondered how an Athlon 2c/4t would compare. Thanks for including some of that.I wonder if they can actually sell this garbage? Several months ago it would have been no problem for me to get an Athlon, mb, and DDR4 for less than $200.
I wonder how my old a4-6300 would compare. I still use it occasionally to install OSes and for file storage.
dromoxen - Friday, January 1, 2021 - link
This is the sort of system I might/could be interested in ... except its horribly outdated, and slow. Something with decent perfromance and a supremely low power usage (ergo v low heat output) would be more appropriate eg a laptop WITHOUT a screen, keyboard,charger,battery .Where most of these SFF items fail is their lack of gfx muscle .
Thanks NV for killing off MXM(micro-sized gfx card), which was earths last, best hope.
Deskmini seems far better ??
Athlex - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
"despite there being no mention of MSI anywhere else on the product or through the stack"Looks like there's a Microstar part number just below the M.2 SATA slot - MS-7C28