Intel NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon) Gaming Performance - A Second Look
by Ganesh T S on May 14, 2018 8:01 AM ESTGaming Performance - Grand Theft Auto V
GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence.
We processed the benchmark across various resolutions and quality settings. The results are presented below. Further down, we have the various differing aspects in the settings for each set.
| Grand Theft Auto V Performance | |||
In almost all cases, the trend is as expected. In the 1080p case with low quality settings, the performance seems to be CPU-limited, allowing the Hades Canyon NUC to match the more powerful systems. The game seems to be friendly to the Hades Canyon NUC only in the low quality settings.
| Grand Theft Auto V - Evaluated Quality Settings | ||||||
| Aspect | 720p Max | 1080p Low | 1080p Max | 1440p VHigh | 4K Low | 4K High |
| Screen Resolution | 1280 x 720 | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1080 | 2560 x 1440 | 3840 x 2160 | 3840 x 2160 |
| Reflection MSAA | 8 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 8 |
| MSAA | 8 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 8 |
| Tessellation | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Shadow Quality | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| Reflection Quality | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| SSAO | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16 | 0 | 16 | 16 | 0 | 16 |
| Texture Quality | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Particle Quality | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Water Quality | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Grass Quality | 3 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Shader Quality | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Soft Shadows | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Ultra & Long Shadows | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y |
| FXAA | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y |
| PostFX | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| DoF | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y |
| HdStreamingInFlight | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y |
| MaxLodScale | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
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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?