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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JohnGalt1717 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Can someone tell me if they have been able to run 4x 4K monitors (i.e. HDMI hooked to one, mDp hooked to another and then 2 mDp hooked via adapter to the Thunderbolt 3 port)?Looking to replace my desktop but need 4 screens.
DanNeely - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Unfortunately while you'd have the connectivity to do so, I think Intel's IGP itself is still capped at 3 displays.BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
@JohnGalt1717: "Can someone tell me if they have been able to run 4x 4K monitors ..."I just tried it with a slightly different setup, but it was still an HQ processor with Iris Pro 580 (i7-6870HQ). It looks like DanNeely is correct. The IGP is still capped at 3 displays even without considering 4K.
JohnGalt1717 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
too Bad :<xchaotic - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
What is the expected market for this? For both my professional and personal uses, lack of proper dGPU support is a deal breaker - for anything from games, through movie and photo enhancements to machine learning and graph stores all being accelerated by DGPUs, I suspect this will have a very limited to a very small subset of hardcore enthusiastblahsaysblah - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
I had the NUC5i7, the machine was just too loud when used in professional manner. And it was ridiculous, they had space to put a better cooler.I had my doubts when initial mockups flew around internet. This is again another useless NUC. Crazy who has final say over design on this at Intel. They just keep shooting themselves in the foot. Seriously. They are afraid of success.
JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Not every game requires a dGPU, as many popular MOBAs play just fine without it, and there are people who play competitively for these games on worse hardware.This is nice as a HTPC, a thin-client, an emulation station, or a monitor/TV mounted PC for grandma or grandpa.
Understandably, this isn't a product you need, but do keep in mind that others on the market do want mini-PCs and can find a use for them.
JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
Oh, also, the inclusion of Thunderbolt 3 means this could be a PC you can velcro to a external graphics card dock (like the Razer Core) to have a very portable LAN PC.LostWander - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
It's mentioned in the article that the external graphics dock likely won't work because the thunderbolt port isn't given enough bandwidthLostWander - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
won't work well*The link is only at a maximum PCIe 3.0 x4 under ideal conditions and it is separated from the CPU so the performance gain won't be optimal.