Surprising Octane Test Results

Okay, so some of you may have seen a post I submitted recently about a free mini PC that I got from work, on which I ended up installing Linux Lite.

And since I was playing around with that, in addition to (at work) some Intel Compute Sticks that we had to set up to take over the role of digital signage, I decided to finally go ahead and buy a Compute Stick of my own at Micro Center (I’ve kind of wanted one for a long time now, ever since they came on the market, but you know how it can be advantageous to wait for Rev 2).

Anyway, the Compute Stick was extremely easy to set up and is cool and everything, but what I really started to become curious about was comparing the performance between the Compute Stick and the mini PC.

So I decided to use the latest version of the Octane test, which is a JavaScript-based benchmark.

I’ll get to the results in a minute, but keep in mind, the specs of the two devices:

Linux mini PC — 1.73 GHz Celeron from 2007, 2 GB of RAM

Intel Compute Stick — Atom X5, also 2 GB of RAM

So what did they score? This surprised me:

Linux mini PC — About 6,600

Intel Compute Stick — About 4,600

Now, neither of these scores is anything to brag about of course, but to me it was kind of a head scratcher. A single core Celeron that is 10 years old came up with a better number than a late model Atom? What do you guys think? Is that about right?

Anyway, I don’t care, because they’re both fun to use connected to my TV, but I still thought this was interesting.

For kicks, if you’re interested in some other scores for comparison’s sake, here are the results on some of my other devices:

Main Core i5 gaming rig — 36,000

Core 2 Duo Linux tower — 18,000

2017 iPad 9.7″ — 16,000

Asus 2-in-1 — 16,000

Nexus 7 tablet — 3,000

My $60 LG Android phone — 1,500 (lol, I think that’s hilarious)