Intel NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon) Gaming Performance - A Second Look
by Ganesh T S on May 14, 2018 8:01 AM ESTConcluding Remarks
The preceding pages presented the performance of the NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon) NUC in select modern games. The new games are part of our updated gaming benchmarks suite that we plan to use for evaluation of mini-PCs for the next couple of years. We also presented results from the processing of the benchmarks on some modern small-form factor gaming systems.
Fundamentally, nothing much changes in terms of our previous conclusions regarding the gaming prowess of the Hades Canyon NUC. It roughly slots in-between the GTX 960 and GTX 980 in graphics performance. In GPU-limited cases, it can barely touch the performance of the GTX 1060. However, in games such as Dota 2 (which are CPU-limited at most resolutions), the extra power budget available helps the Hades Canyon NUC to come out with very good performance numbers.
I do however have to mention my disappointment in Intel and AMD for their poorly thought out (if not bordering on deceptive) naming scheme for the Kaby Lake-G dGPU – the Radeon RX Vega M. As we’ve since found out and confirmed thanks to telling Linux driver commits, while Intel and AMD are calling this GPU a Vega, it doesn’t actually include any of the core features that make up the Vega GPU architecture. Features such as Rapid Packed Math, tiled rasterization, and support for Direct3D feature level 12_1 are all absent from Vega M. The only “Vega” feature is the HBM2 memory controller, which is very important for this product given the integrated nature of Kaby Lake-G, but also not a part of the core GPU architecture. Instead, the heart of Vega M appears to be Polaris, AMD’s previous GPU architecture, which itself was a minor update to their 2014 GCN 3 GPU architecture.
Which isn’t to say that the Vega M is a bad GPU. The performance we see in all of these benchmarks speaks volumes, and this is by far the most powerful x86 system-on-package processor available today – not to mention it’s way faster than Intel’s own iGPUs. And we can even understand why Intel and AMD would want to use a Polaris-based design for this product, as the development and integration time for this chip meant that they would want to work with proven hardware first (which is why this is Kaby Lake + Polaris rather than Coffee Lake + Vega). But still, it’s an odd scenario when the dGPU being used offers a lesser DirectX feature set than Intel’s own iGPU. And at the end of the day, I don’t see how calling this a Vega GPU benefitted anyone buying Hades Canyon or Kaby Lake-G in systems today. That said, Intel claims certain performance numbers for Kaby Lake-G, and, our evaluation of the Hades Canyon NUC with real-world gaming benchmarks backs up those claims.
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zodiacfml - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
As usual,pricey. It has a niche though for a powerful desktop system with the machine just behind the monitor.Outside that, alternatives are usually cheaper/more powerful at the expense of being slghtly larger than the Intel NUC.
For my use, I wouldn't hesitate buying a laptop with similar specs attached permanently to a monitor.
eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link
This thing is nice, but too expensive for my taste and wallet. I am waiting for a Ryzen 2400G based ENUC (even newer unit of computing) from AMD! Price it right, keep it quiet, give it at least 3 USB 3 / 3.1 ports and HDMI 2.0b, and they'll sell like hotcakes.Alme - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link
Hello. Can someone please recommend which one of these two will work best for this NUC:- Samsung 960 EVO MZ-V6E1T0BW - Solid state drive - encrypted - 1 TB - internal - M.2 2280 - PCI Express 3.0 x4 (NVMe) - 256-bit AES
- Samsung 860 EVO MZ-N6E1T0BW - Solid state drive - encrypted - 1 TB - internal - M.2 2280 - SATA 6Gb/s - buffer: 1 GB - 256-bit AES
Feel free to recommend something else as well.
Hixbot - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link
Once again I'll point out that noise measurements should be part of all your sff pc reviews.hanselltc - Wednesday, May 16, 2018 - link
Would love to see Ashes of the Benchmarks just for the giggles. Anyway, nice smol product, not my jam.85739gary - Friday, May 18, 2018 - link
This little PC gadget is very good, sure, geeks can build something a "bit" higher powered for the same $ or less...it's your call..BUY it, use it now..or get all the parts you need and build something similar or better...yawn...
rosenstand - Sunday, August 26, 2018 - link
Considering buying this NUC to play GTA V. I’m not a gamer, but have always enjoyed the GTA series (even bought a PS3 console + game when V came out, then a PS4 console + game a year later when the PS4 version became available :-))In this review it looks like the NUC will barely run it in 1080p with ultra settings, however there are a couple of YouTube videos showing the Hades Canyon blasting it off with avg 100 FPS at 1080p with almost-ultra settings. One of them does 30-40 FPS at 4K with high settings as well. Are they fake?
Sirkassad - Saturday, April 20, 2019 - link
The RAM in your Hades Canon says Kingston HyperX Impact HX432S20IB2K2/16 DDR420-22-22-42 @ 3200 MHz 2x8 GB and yet product pages say the max freq for RAM is 2400MHz. I am getting ready to buy a Hades Canon and would like to get two sticks of 16GB RAM such as: Kingston Technology HyperX Impact 32GB 3200MHz DDR4 CL20 SODIMM Memory HX432S20IBK2/32. Will this work?