Intel's Haswell NUC: D54250WYK UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on January 3, 2014 4:25 PM ESTThe NUC as an HTPC
The form factor and network streaming power consumption profile of the Intel D54250WYK NUC makes it a very attractive option for HTPCs. We have already covered Haswell as a HTPC platform in great detail before. So, we will just take a look at a couple of interesting aspects which may vary from one build to another.
Refresh Rate Handling:
One of the most important fixes in Haswell for HTPC users was increased display refresh rate accuracy. We have already seen 23.976 Hz working perfectly in our custom Haswell HTPC build. The gallery below presents the various refresh rates that we tested out on the Intel D54250WYK NUC.
As expected, the refresh rate accuracy is excellent across all tested points. One of the pleasantly surprising aspect was that the drivers allowed forcing of refresh rates not reported by the display through EDID. This must have come in a recent update, because, when I was evaluating our first Haswell HTPC build, the i7-4765T based PC refused to drive 50 Hz on the Sony KDL46EX720. However, the NUC was able to do it successfully after deselecting 'Hide modes not supported by this monitor'.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks:
Detailed decoder / renderer benchmarks for Haswell were presented in our initial review. For the NUC, we are going to concentrate on XBMC's native decoding / rendering (used by the average HTPC user) and the combination of QuickSync with EVR-CP and madVR.
We used MPC-HC v1.7.1 for evaluation. LAV Filters 0.59.1.26 come pre-integrated as the default choice with that version. madVR 0.86.11 was configured with the following options: no decoding, deinterlacing automatically activated when needed with deactivation when in doubt (decided by only looking at pixels in the frame center), chroma upscaling set to bicubic with a sharpness of 75, image upscaling and downscaling done by GPU video logic using DXVA2 calls, rendering in full screen exclusive mode with playback delayed until fill up of the render queue, a separate device for presentation, CPU and GPU queue sizes of 128 and 24, 16 frames presented in advance, smooth motion features disabled and the default quality-performance tradeoffs of 16b pixel shader results and subtitle quality optimization for performance.
A number of experiments were done with different madVR settings and this was the one with which we were able to play all our test streams without frame drops. It must be noted that the streams benchmarked are meant to stress the system. The usual media file played back is more of the 1080p24 variety which goes comparatively easy on the resources compared to the 60 fps streams used for the tables below.
| QuickSync Decoder + EVR-CP | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 23.02 | 7.55 | 11.27 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 20.80 | 6.68 | 10.97 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 33.04 | 16.53 | 13.70 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 38.72 | 16.44 | 14.66 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 37.29 | 12.82 | 13.95 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 35.53 | 14.31 | 14.61 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 41.98 | 19.88 | 16.05 W |
| QuickSync Decoder + madVR | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 44.66 | 9.72 | 15.59 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 49.02 | 10.98 | 16.01 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 58.57 | 24.98 | 19.27 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 56.97 | 35.28 | 23.60 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 54.76 | 33.13 | 23.17 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 56.49 | 34.00 | 23.19 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 60.21 | 27.92 | 27.01 W |
| XBMC 12.3 | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2* | 23.92 | 7.32 | 11.20 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 11.23 | 4.44 | 9.23 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 28.80 | 8.79 | 11.99 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 16.71 | 7.42 | 10.78 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 16.52 | 6.04 | 10.22 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1** | 5.23 | 5.34 | 8.71 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 33.62 | 8.16 | 13.05 W |
The only disappointing aspects above are related to the native decoder / renderer used by XBMC. Interlaced VC-1 decoding is broken when hardware accelerated decoding is enabled. Deinterlacing, particularly for the 480i60 stream, was not properly performed with any combination of settings. On the other hand, QuickSync decoding works smoothly (as expected) for all the test streams when used with any renderer.
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bigdang - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Which devices are not being recognized? I had some devices not recognized on my box, but I was able to clear those up by downloading drivers from the NUC product support page. I downloaded the Management Engine Driver, the Nuvotron Driver, and (IIRC) the Gigabit Ethernet controller driver.quillaja - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Device manager lists them as "PCI Simple Communications Controller", "SM Bus Controller", and "Unknown device". I strongly suspect the "unknown device" is the IR receiver (Nuvotron). I guessed I could probably get drivers for these devices from Intel's support page, but since not having them hasn't really affected the operation of my PC, I never bothered. I just dislike knowing that things aren't "perfect".jhoff80 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
The first two happen on any Intel-based PC, not just this one. It's the Intel management stuff.Lundmark - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
Thanks for the review. I'm getting a new HTPC any day now. Should I get the NUC or a Mac mini?I like Macs better and I know it will work with my TV's remote control, since it supports Apple remotes. But, apparently, there are issues with 24p both on Intel HD 4000 (which is off by 00,003 fps and thus shouldn't matter?) and OS X, which outputs exactly 24 fps and not 23,976. This causes judder, even if Plex/XBMC is set to match video speed to refresh rate. Apparently, you can fix this with SwitchResX, but it's a hack. I would probably run Windows on the Mac anyway for HD audio support. How serious is the Intel HD 4000 24p "bug", really? 00,003 frames sounds like nothing.
I'm also interested in what type of IR commands the NUC supports. With the Mac, I know what I'm getting and that it works, but I have no experience with the NUC. Incidentally, I need to find out if the NUC can be made to listen to any of the IR codes in my TV's database. My TV has IR blasters and downloads IR codes from the web, but that requires that the right codes are in the database. If the NUC can listen to an Apple remote, then I know it will work.
What do you think?
DigitalFreak - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
The HDMI full range problem you mentioned appears to be fixed if you do a registry edit.http://www.avsforum.com/t/1477460/theory-about-int...
Alketi - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
It's also fixed in the latest OpenELEC nightly builds, if you're considering this as a dedicated HTPC running XBMC.JDG1980 - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
I lost interest in this review when I realized that the system didn't have Iris Pro. Why is Intel so stingy in parceling out this SKU? Are they having yield problems? At this point, for all intents and purposes, it appears to be a rMBP-only part. I did a Google search for the Gigabyte BRIX that's supposed to have Iris Pro, but found only announcement articles - no reviews and no sellers. Has that been released yet?I really don't get Intel's strategy with Iris Pro. It's almost like they don't want it to succeed.
ganeshts - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
I have a review unit in hand :) Review coming up after CES, may do a quick rundown before that...elian123 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Great! Really looking forward to that as I'm very interested in the Brix Pro.I hope in the review you can shed some light on the performance at 60Hz over displayport on UHD displays such as the Asus PQ321QE.
Jeffrey Bosboom - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
I'm also looking forward to the Brix Pro review, but please do some gaming tests in addition to the HTPC stuff. I'm curious how an Iris Pro part compares to a hypothetical Steam box with AMD's integrated graphics or a low-end discrete card. (I'm guessing it'll be thermally-limited, though I don't know what the Brix Pro's cooling is like.)