Encoding, Video Playback Performance
The new Braswell SoCs perform similarly to the Bay Trail-D SoCs in HandBrake. The new Pentium N3700 delivered the same performance as the Pentium J2900, while the Celeron N3050 matched the Celeron J1800.
Like HandBrake the x264 HD Benchmark shows minimal performance difference between the Braswell and Bay Trail-D SoCs. The Pentium N3700 was only slightly slower than the J2900, while the Celeron N3050 was slightly slower than the J1800.
When benchmarking with Video Master Works we find that both the Pentium N3700 and Celeron N3050 were a fraction faster than their Bay Trail-D equivalents.
According to PCMark 7 both the Pentium N3700 and Celeron N3050 are sufficient for 1080p (30fps, 10Mbps) video playback, just as we expected.
Not wanting to just take PCMark's word for it, we conducted our own 720p and 1080p tests using MPlayer. Using the benchmark mode MPlayer allows the system to play the video as fast as it can without frame loss. With 720p content we hit a bottleneck of around 60fps pretty quickly and even the slowest CPUs delivered more than twice the necessary frame rate at 56.5fps.
Naturally, 1080p content is more demanding and we look for at least 25fps for flawless playback. The Celeron J1800 stuggled in this test with just 24fps and the new Celeron N3050 was no better while the Pentium N3700 was slower than the J2900 with 47fps.