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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jasonelmore - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
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 CPUlmcd - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Plus the fact that PCIe 2.0 x4 was shown to be the tipping point between bandwidth limited and not for single GPU systems, I believe. 3.0 is twice that, and 2.0 4x barely even throttled that one graphics card -> there's a decent bit of overhead available.Cuhulin - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
The only question I have about the Razer Core approach is price. Wouldn't it be better to simply buy a Razer Stealth instead?fanofanand - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Grandpa/Grandma don't need a 1k PC. They would be adequately served by the PC sticks. This would be massive overkill for Fakebook browsing. This is a product desperately searching for a niche market.gurok - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
You say that, but they've incorporated a skull design specifically for grandpas/grandmas.Cuhulin - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Let's see whether you think the same way when you are a grandparent, or at least old enough to be one. I am a grandfather, and I need a decent PC for my 4k gaming, among other things - which means way more than 1k at this time. (I have at least 2k in the 3 4k monitors on my desk, for one thing). I suck at FPS games these days - reflexes just aren't what they were decades ago - but I still have fun. So maybe the ageism should be put away?Calista - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Why would you spend 1000 dollars on something a 300 dollar machine does almost just as well? No, this is a really an odd product which can't be upgraded, which can't play current games and which cost an arm and a leg. And why, to save a little bit of space on a desk already housing a (most likely) large monitor, large keyboard and a mouse. I could see the charm of something like this had we had easy access to MXM (or similar standard) modules. But for anyone else far better and almost as small options seem to exist.milkod2001 - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
for $1000 one can get same specs laptop which comes with screen and keyboard already = much better buy/value.The only thing when NUCs make sense is if you need to hook it behind telly and use it as streaming device otherwise any other option gives you much more.
Calista - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
Yeah. I have never understood this "I need a high-end PC, thus I buy an expensive PC which will only be high-end for the next 12 months" while keeping it for the next three years. Either we need high-end components and then we will always need the latest high-end components or else we don't need high-end components and then it doesn't make sense to buy expensive bleeding edge stuff.JBSZQn1LI06L8j33 - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
i am thinking about it, but it is too expensive right now. it needs to be $400 and should come with windows usb. Right now it is basically laptop without keyboard, screen, touch-pad and external power supply. I really like the form factor ...