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.
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spikebike - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Anyone know why the GB-BXi5G-760 is so slow? The spec looks pretty similar to the EN970 (same gpu), to performs radically worse on all the games.Calista - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Was it not related to heavy throttling? Like *really heavy* throttling.trane - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
Pleasantly surprised by the GPU. Pretty damn good, around the same as a 750 Ti.tipoo - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I thought it would be more to be honest. Looks like the size of the heatsink is limiting it. It's good, but at nearly double the EUs of the already ok Iris Pro 5200 in my Haswell machine, I expected the 72 EU to do better than this.potf - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
Missing Noise levels in anandtech reviews, with the thermals ?The product maybe has a target, which is not me, but the problem with the mini pc reviews at anand is that we only get 1 or 2 little measurements on the fan noise, and in the skull canyon Nuc, I think it's disappointing, as you mention it in the final comment
> " We would gladly trade a modest increase in the footprint of the system for lower fan noise. That said, the fan noise is in no way comparable to the BRIX Gaming lineup. It is just that it is not as silent as the traditional NUCs."
For example, measuring noise at idle, at gpu / cpu loads, and getting a noise comparison at these points would be useful : the thermals are very nice, but you cannot compare them really/easily from one pc to the other.
My point is that with the current idle power at 17 watts in your test, this racehorse nuc is never ever silent or even quiet, but I would like to see comparisons with the other nucs or at least the MSI cubi 2 recently reviewed.
Also curious about the noise level of the asus VC65 / VC65R relative to that of the Skull Nuc ;), what I mean is that the chosen form factor can be either optimal, or poorer than other 35W-45W solutions.
Will we be getting noise comparisons betwen PCs in a nice chart soon ?
Osamede - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
I'm asking: what is the use case that Intel are targeting and marketing to? Is it 1080P?milkod2001 - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
I'd say the only NUCs which make sense to buy are the cheapest options(not the one reviewed here). Good enough for office work, youtube, Facebook and internet browsing.For gaming or serious work laptop or mini ATX build will give user much much more than this overpriced fancy NUC
rhx123 - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
So disappointed. I was really looking forward to this product, but the PCIE/DMI Situation is incredibly silly. Must be intentional, but why?Such a waste.
Femton - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
What is your comment to jasonelmore who earlier ( Monday, May 23, 2016) that "it will work fine. Intel has been using the Razer External GPU Chassis and they even commented on it here on Anandtech Comments, on the last article that was posted about it. DMI 3.0 still does 4GB/s and the CPU is not transferring huge amounts of bandwidth hungry texture data back and forth with the CPU." ?Osamede - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
Noise focus is something that has been a weakness here for some time. And not much awareness from the folks who run this place about it.SPCR is a better place to find what you are asking about. Intel is one of their sponsors, so no doubt they'll have a review up before long.