The Intel Skull Canyon NUC6i7KYK mini-PC Review
by Ganesh T S on May 23, 2016 8:00 AM ESTGaming Benchmarks
Intel's Iris Pro Graphics SKUs with integrated EDRAM are amongst the highest-performing iGPUs in the market right now. The Core i7-6770HQ is equipped with Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580 - a GT4e part with 72 EUs and 128MB of eDRAM.
For the purpose of benchmarking, we chose six different games (Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, The Talos Principle, GRID Autosport and DiRT Showdown) at various quality levels. The purpose of this section is not to benchmark the latest and greatest games, or benchmark at 4K resolutions. Intel clearly targets the Skull Canyon NUC towards casual gamers and those wanting to get introduced to mainstream gaming titles. As such, it is expected that people would play games with medium settings at 1080p or lower resolutions.
Sleeping Dogs
Tomb Raider
Bioshock Infinite
DiRT Showdown
The Talos Principle
GRID Autosport
All the numbers point to expected results - Skull Canyon is simply the best when it comes to having the best iGPU for gaming purposes. However, it is a bit of a disappointment when compared to systems having slightly bigger footprints, but, equipped with previous generation discrete mobile GPUs. An external Thunderbolt GPU dock can solve some of the issues for users wanting more graphics prowess than what the Iris Pro Graphics 580 can deliver, but that has a significant price premium, and it is not something that we evaluated as part of this review.
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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.