The Intel Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK mini-PC Review
by Ganesh T S on May 23, 2016 8:00 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - II
In this section, we mainly look at benchmark modes in programs used on a day-to-day basis, i.e, application performance and not synthetic workloads.
x264 Benchmark
First off, we have some video encoding benchmarks courtesy of x264 HD Benchmark v5.0. This is simply a test of CPU performance. As expected, the latest generation 45W Core i7-6770HQ emerges as the best of the lot, surpassing even 65W TDP CPUs from a couple of generations back.
7-Zip
7-Zip is a very effective and efficient compression program, often beating out OpenCL accelerated commercial programs in benchmarks even while using just the CPU power. 7-Zip has a benchmarking program that provides tons of details regarding the underlying CPU's efficiency. In this subsection, we are interested in the compression and decompression MIPS ratings when utilizing all the available threads. This workload doesn't show the benefits evident in the previous section, with systems using the 65W TDP CPUs getting a slight lead over the NUC6i7KYK.
TrueCrypt
As businesses (and even home consumers) become more security conscious, the importance of encryption can't be overstated. Intel CPUs supporting the AES-NI instruction have acceleration for the encryption and decryption processes. The Core i7-6770HQ in the NUC6i7KYK does have AES-NI support. TrueCrypt, a popular open-source disk encryption program can take advantage of the AES-NI capabilities. The TrueCrypt internal benchmark provides some interesting cryptography-related numbers. In the graph below, we can get an idea of how fast a TrueCrypt volume would behave in the Intel NUC6i7KYK (Skull Canyon) and how it would compare with other select PCs. This is a purely CPU feature / clock speed based test.
Agisoft Photoscan
Agisoft PhotoScan is a commercial program that converts 2D images into 3D point maps, meshes and textures. The program designers sent us a command line version in order to evaluate the efficiency of various systems that go under our review scanner. The command line version has two benchmark modes, one using the CPU and the other using both the CPU and GPU (via OpenCL). The benchmark takes around 50 photographs and does four stages of computation:
- Stage 1: Align Photographs
- Stage 2: Build Point Cloud (capable of OpenCL acceleration)
- Stage 3: Build Mesh
- Stage 4: Build Textures
We record the time taken for each stage. Since various elements of the software are single threaded, others multithreaded, and some use GPUs, it is interesting to record the effects of CPU generations, speeds, number of cores, DRAM parameters and the GPU using this software.
The combination of CPU power and EDRAM helps the compute capabilities when it comes to OpenCL acceleration in the second stage of the benchmark. Only the ASRock VisionX 471D with an AMD GPU performs better. Skull Canyon is placed in the top two in all the CPU-intensive stages.
Dolphin Emulator
Wrapping up our application benchmark numbers is the Dolphin Emulator benchmark mode results. This is again a test of the CPU capabilities, and this workload favors the 65W TDP CPUs. The architectural changes in Skylake are not enough to overcome the benefits provided by the higher-clock speed of the Core i7-4770R.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
133 Comments
View All Comments
Kimo19 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
thanks a lot for the review. I am thinking to get this machine for photos editing (lightroom) and mobile development. would it be a good choice ? I was thinking the processor/ram/ssd are good enough to provide great performance for the next 2/3 years and the iris pro can be a good gpu to support monitor with high resolutionTheinsanegamerN - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
For the price you could get something much more powerful, or something along the same power with better GPU support for a cheaper price then this NUC.fanofanand - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Keep in mind that you are bringing your own RAM and SSD, the kit does not include those items for the consumer. As for the iGPU providing support for high resolution, I think that will depend entirely on your workload.alpha64 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Ganesh, Did you get confirmation directly from Intel that the PCI-E is limited on this system because it runs through the H170? From my research on ARK and other places, it appears that the H170 acts as a PCI Express passthrough, with a PCI express 3.0 x16 connection to the CPU, and the ability to split the configuration off to smaller widths and more ports coming off the H170. It would seem the DMI3 connection is for other (non-PCI express) peripherals. Granted, from the block diagram, it is not apparent that the H170 connects to the CPU's PCI-E x16 connection, but my guess is that it does.I would just like clarification, as this is a pretty big deal.
ganeshts - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
I have confirmation from the technical marketing manager for NUC products at Intel that the communication link between the H170 and the CPU is only effectively PCIe 3.0 x4 for bandwidth purposes. It is definitely not a PCIe 3.0 x16.H170 itself can act as a PCIe switch, but, for anything that talks to the CPU, it has to go through the DMI 3.0 lanes.
alpha64 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Thanks for the clarification!extide - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
The 16 CPU lanes are entirely un-used in this device. The PCH (H170 in this case) is NEVER connected by a PCIe x16 link -- it is always connected via DMI 3.0 in the H, Q, B and Z platforms. DMI 3.0 has the same B/W as PCIe 3.0 x4. All of the stuff hanging off the H170 shares that same DMI 3.0 link.alpha64 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Great to know, can you tell me what "Processor PCI Express Port" under "I/O Specifications" details are for on the Intel's ARK for the H170 part? I thought they were for connecting to the PCI Express on the CPU, but would be happy to learn if I am incorrect.Valantar - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
I'm disappointed in the lack of teardown pictures. I was at the very least expecting a look at the cpu side of the board. Is that too much to ask?Also, considering the massive power throttling seen in your testing, and the torture test nature of the testing, I'd love it if you could monitor clocks and temps during gaming too - I'd be interested in seeing what kind of cpu clocks this can maintain in a low-threaded gaming workload.
allanmac - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Please run SGEMM on the HD 580 ... ASAP! :)https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/sgemm-fo...