Memory Frequency Scaling on Intel's Skull Canyon NUC - An Investigation

CPU Performance Benchmarks

Our first focus is on CPU-centric benchmarks. Detailed descriptions of each benchmark and what is actually tested can be gathered from our recent gaming mini-PC review here and here. While the exact benchmark numbers are available in the graphs below, the kits behave largely the same across all the benchmarks. There is no clear winner across all the benchmarks. In fact, all the gathered scores are within the margin of error from run to run. They are not even that different from the numbers we obtaine with the 16GB DDR4 2133 MHz kit in our original Skull Canyon NUC review. Memory frequencies and latencies don't seem to matter beyond 2133 MHz for CPU-centric benchmarks in the NUC6i7KYK. The reason for this could be the excellent caching aspects of the system. The availability of eDRAM as a global cache ensures that most workloads are not affected by the main memory characteristics beyond a certain configuration.

BAPCo SYSmark 2014

Futuremark PCMark 8 and PCMark 7

3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R15

7-Zip

x264 HD Video Encoding Benchmark v5.0

Agisoft Photoscan Benchmark

Dolphin Emulator