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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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 ...