Gaming Notebooks Compared

One of the most common comments posted in response to mini-PC reviews is that the value proposition of an equivalent notebook is much higher than that of the PC. While there are plenty of factors that might make this comparison invalid, we thought it would be interesting to see how the NUC8i7HVK fares against premium gaming notebooks. Towards this, we borrowed a few benchmarks from our notebook reviews and processed them on the NUC. In the graphs below, we also have the gaming mini-PCs on which the benchmarks were processed. First, we will look at some artificial benchmarks before moving on to the games themselves.

3DMark Revisited

Futuremark 3DMark (2013)
Futuremark 3DMark (2013)
Futuremark 3DMark (2013)
Futuremark 3DMark (2013)
Futuremark 3DMark (2013)
Futuremark 3DMark (2013)

GFXBench

GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan Offscreen 1080p
GFXBench 3.0 T-Rex Offscreen 1080p

Dota 2

Dota 2 Reborn - Enthusiast

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Shadow of Mordor - Enthusiast

The takeaway from these results is that the performance of the Radeon RX Vega M GH roughly slots around GTX 970M. There are some benchmarks such as Dota 2 that are more sensitive to the CPU power, and in those cases, we find that the NUC8i7HVK actually comes in far ahead of other gaming notebooks that use processors with TDPs of 45W or lower.

Gaming Benchmarks Networking and Storage Performance
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  • MattEm - Wednesday, April 11, 2018 - link

    Can the Hades Canyon be powered by Thuderbolt port or do you need to use the power brick? I am wondering whether I can just plug it into my dell tb dock.
  • HStewart - Sunday, April 15, 2018 - link

    One of the biggest problems these 880xG based laptops as I been playing around with my XPS 15 2in1 ( 8805G ) is that a lot of software especially games do not know how to handle it.

    The best example is Steam VR Test application, even though the software on laptop indicates that CPU is designated to run on the Vega. The Steam VR applications indicated it running on Intel 620. Thus giving it a low score. I have a friend pre-order the Vive headset and thought I give the test application a try - but I search the web on headset and a lot of people are returning them - so this mabe a steam VR issue only.
  • Eastman - Tuesday, April 17, 2018 - link

    Does anyone know if the Hades Canyon will support AMD's Pro Radeon Software? I'm wondering since it's got a Vega M GPU. If it will this would make a fantastic portable workstation solution for me.
  • josehdx - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link

    Can anyone verify this update? https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27718/In...
    Intel says the next coments: Intel SGX software is required:

    If SGX security is enabled in BIOS.
    To play UHD Bluray content.

    So, is it capable to play UHD after the update?

    Thanks!
  • sevenup75 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link

    I have downloaded and tried install it but failed.
    But my 8809g do play UHD Blurays fine.
  • nagus - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link

    I appreciate your in depth guide. I am the owner of a skull canyon NUC with no HDR support. I was saddened by this because I figured mini displayport > HDMI 2.0a adapter was going to do the trick. Anyways looking for an upgrade model that will support HDR nicely. After reading about the issues the Vega gpu has with HDR support I think I will wait for the next round of NUCs.
  • temptation1234 - Saturday, June 2, 2018 - link

    Chuwi HiGame is more VFM , I guess.
    1.Higame has 8GB DDR4 Memory,Canyon no
    2.Higame has 128GB/256GB SSD, Canyon no
    3.Higame has Windows 10 OS,Canyon no
  • sevenup75 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link

    Got a Intel NUC 8809G for 3 days.
    And it do play back UHD Blu-rays. The only problem is Cyberlink Powdvd 18 and UHD BD Advisor tool cann't detect the LG UK850 HDR display and PD18 played in SDR format. But Potplay can play back HDR UHD BDs fine.
    Also find there are differences between the TB 3/DP 1.4/HDMI 2.0 ports: TB 3 cannot show the Intel NUC logo during the boot, only support 8bit SDR color; HDMI 2.0 support 8bit HDR color; only DP 1.4 support 10bit HDR output.

    btw, the 230w psu in the NUC box is made from Lite-ON and it's almost the same look with my 10 years old dell precision M6400's 230w psu which is made from Delta.
    I have the Delta one instead the new Lite-ON psu for 3 days ^-^
  • Sheunghko - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link

    Does that mean there is at least one tb3 that is hook up with the CPU ?
  • Sheunghko - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link

    Does this Vega M support freesync?

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