The Intel NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon) Review: Kaby Lake-G Benchmarked
by Ganesh T S on March 29, 2018 1:00 PM 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 Core i7-8809G with its 65W processor TDP slots closer to the Core i7-6700 and the Core i7-7700. Recent releases of the x264 benchmark can show even more impressive gains, as they make use of the latest and greatest features of the modern Intel processors.
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. The performance order is similar to the one encountered in the x264 benchmark.
TrueCrypt
As businesses (and even home consumers) become more security conscious, the importance of encryption can't be overstated. CPUs supporting the AES-NI instruction for accelerating the encryption and decryption processes have become more widespread over the last few years. 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 to ponder. In the graph below, we can get an idea of how fast a TrueCrypt volume would behave in the Intel NUC8i7HVK (Hades 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). We have been using an old version of the program with 50 photogaphs in our reviews till now. The updated benchmark (v1.3) now takes around 84 photographs and does four stages of computation:
- Stage 1: Align Photographs (capable of OpenCL acceleration)
- 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 GPU-enabled numbers for Stage 1 and 2 below are with the use of the Intel HD Graphics 630, since our benchmark version only supports use of the first enumerated GPU. Unfortunately, when we tried to disable the integrated GPU and use only the discrete GPU after changing the BIOS setting, the benchmark consistently crashed while starting the first stage itself.
Dolphin Emulator
Wrapping up our application benchmark numbers is the new Dolphin Emulator (v5) benchmark mode results. This is again a test of the CPU capabilities, and the Core i7-8809G slots inbetween the 45W TDP Core i7-7700HQ and the 65W Core i7-7700.
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Hifihedgehog - Monday, April 2, 2018 - link
PS: Raven Ridge’s claim to fame is support for fixed function 10-bit VP9 decoding.tomshardware (dot) co (dot) uk/amd-ryzen-5-2400g-zen-vega-cpu-gpu,review-34205-4.html
kunal29 - Saturday, March 31, 2018 - link
What about the latency benchmarks between GPU and CPU?beginner99 - Sunday, April 1, 2018 - link
Not being able to play UHD BluRay basically kills the product as HTPC which limits it to gaming and that is a steep price to ask just for that. My effing TV can play 4k HDR but this $1300 PC can't???Tyler_Durden_83 - Monday, April 2, 2018 - link
Here is an idea, the benchmarks as images are so last decade, seeing the review of the zotac without the benchmarks of hades canyon just because it came out one day earlier, or with a terribly old xps 15 model even though you did bench the latest, is quite frankly not the high standard that people expect from Anandkmmatney - Monday, April 2, 2018 - link
This is a nice system, but still way too expensive. You can get a gaming laptop with 15" screen, 7700HQ cpu, RAM, Windows OS, usually an SSD OS drive, and a GTX 1060 for around this barebone price. Even less if you go for a 1050 Ti, which is about equivalent to this. It's impressive, but I just have never gotten the point of these expensive NUCs.JKJK - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link
lack of UHD/HDR support in many cases and those kodi freezes .... meh.I would like to see some update on these freeze-issues in the future.
HakkaH - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link
Too bad they didn't throw in the AMD 200G and 2400G with the benchmarks. You can build a small system with it which would be a whole lot cheaper and probably pretty decent when it comes to gaming speed.Dev3 - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
Hey Ganesh, can you comment on the current status of apparent lack of iGPU/AMD-CPU switchable graphics? Is this just an early BIOS/software issue or an unfixable design flaw where video-out is forced to route through the power-sucking Vega chip? This may be tolerable on a NUC but would be totally unacceptable on a laptop.I have an XPS-15 2-in-1 (9575) on order having assumed that Dell would never release a laptop with such a glaring flaw. But now with the first review out (https://www.digitaltrends.com/laptop-reviews/dell-... saying battery life is really bad, I'm getting concerned. Three hours runtime? Really??
I thought this was the laptop I was waiting for but now I'm seriously considering canceling my order before it ships and holding off until the issue is sorted out or at least understood.
I assume Intel is aware of the issue - can they fix it or did they (intentionally or unintentionally) sabotage their own (AMD) product??
AllThings3D - Saturday, April 7, 2018 - link
I noticed you only benchmarked the faster and more expensive NUC8i7HVK. Do you have any plans to benchmark the NUC8i7HNK? I have found very little on this unit and would love to know how much less is expected in performance. If we can obtain at least 50% over the equivalent KabyLake NUC with Iris 620 Graphics, this would be okay for my needs especially since the TDP is 65W versus 100W for the NUC8i7HVK. My purpose is to use this Microsoft Mixed Reality backpack PC with two Sony V-Lock or AntonBauer battery packs. My current NUC "belt system" using the Iris 620 IGPU has worked out very well for doing engineering and architectural VR visualization and with the MSXR using an unbounded positional tracking system, you can navigate larger spaces than with the current HTC/Vive systems. In this YouTube video (https://youtu.be/hM8uwzmhaJY) I am in my backyard, something I don't think I have seen done with the any of the other VR solution :)One more questions. Do you know what the actual VDC in range is? I know previous NUCs had an actual range between 11-24 VDC. Since the 'Belt System' uses a KabyLake NUC, the 14.8 VDC AntonBauer LiPo works great. I hope this is the case here since it would complicate my battery circuit to have have to go with a custom solution.
JKJK - Tuesday, April 10, 2018 - link
So... As a future proof media center (mostly kodi use), should I buy the previous gen?Need answer asap if I need to cancel my order