Intel's Haswell NUC: D54250WYK UCFF PC Review
by Ganesh T S on January 3, 2014 4:25 PM ESTThe NUC as an HTPC
The form factor and network streaming power consumption profile of the Intel D54250WYK NUC makes it a very attractive option for HTPCs. We have already covered Haswell as a HTPC platform in great detail before. So, we will just take a look at a couple of interesting aspects which may vary from one build to another.
Refresh Rate Handling:
One of the most important fixes in Haswell for HTPC users was increased display refresh rate accuracy. We have already seen 23.976 Hz working perfectly in our custom Haswell HTPC build. The gallery below presents the various refresh rates that we tested out on the Intel D54250WYK NUC.
As expected, the refresh rate accuracy is excellent across all tested points. One of the pleasantly surprising aspect was that the drivers allowed forcing of refresh rates not reported by the display through EDID. This must have come in a recent update, because, when I was evaluating our first Haswell HTPC build, the i7-4765T based PC refused to drive 50 Hz on the Sony KDL46EX720. However, the NUC was able to do it successfully after deselecting 'Hide modes not supported by this monitor'.
Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks:
Detailed decoder / renderer benchmarks for Haswell were presented in our initial review. For the NUC, we are going to concentrate on XBMC's native decoding / rendering (used by the average HTPC user) and the combination of QuickSync with EVR-CP and madVR.
We used MPC-HC v1.7.1 for evaluation. LAV Filters 0.59.1.26 come pre-integrated as the default choice with that version. madVR 0.86.11 was configured with the following options: no decoding, deinterlacing automatically activated when needed with deactivation when in doubt (decided by only looking at pixels in the frame center), chroma upscaling set to bicubic with a sharpness of 75, image upscaling and downscaling done by GPU video logic using DXVA2 calls, rendering in full screen exclusive mode with playback delayed until fill up of the render queue, a separate device for presentation, CPU and GPU queue sizes of 128 and 24, 16 frames presented in advance, smooth motion features disabled and the default quality-performance tradeoffs of 16b pixel shader results and subtitle quality optimization for performance.
A number of experiments were done with different madVR settings and this was the one with which we were able to play all our test streams without frame drops. It must be noted that the streams benchmarked are meant to stress the system. The usual media file played back is more of the 1080p24 variety which goes comparatively easy on the resources compared to the 60 fps streams used for the tables below.
| QuickSync Decoder + EVR-CP | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 23.02 | 7.55 | 11.27 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 20.80 | 6.68 | 10.97 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 33.04 | 16.53 | 13.70 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 38.72 | 16.44 | 14.66 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 37.29 | 12.82 | 13.95 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 35.53 | 14.31 | 14.61 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 41.98 | 19.88 | 16.05 W |
| QuickSync Decoder + madVR | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 44.66 | 9.72 | 15.59 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 49.02 | 10.98 | 16.01 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 58.57 | 24.98 | 19.27 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 56.97 | 35.28 | 23.60 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 54.76 | 33.13 | 23.17 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 56.49 | 34.00 | 23.19 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 60.21 | 27.92 | 27.01 W |
| XBMC 12.3 | |||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | CPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2* | 23.92 | 7.32 | 11.20 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 11.23 | 4.44 | 9.23 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 28.80 | 8.79 | 11.99 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 16.71 | 7.42 | 10.78 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 16.52 | 6.04 | 10.22 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1** | 5.23 | 5.34 | 8.71 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 33.62 | 8.16 | 13.05 W |
The only disappointing aspects above are related to the native decoder / renderer used by XBMC. Interlaced VC-1 decoding is broken when hardware accelerated decoding is enabled. Deinterlacing, particularly for the 480i60 stream, was not properly performed with any combination of settings. On the other hand, QuickSync decoding works smoothly (as expected) for all the test streams when used with any renderer.
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fluxtatic - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
I realize the crowd here skews a little different, but consider Linux' marketshare at less than 2%. Not to mention the endless whining - "Ubuntu sucks, test it under Mint" "Don't use kiddie distros, use Debian" "I thought you were teh hardc0r3z, use Arch" etc, etc, ad infinitum.I kid, I kid. But seriously, probably more work than it's worth, really, since you would essentially be nearly doubling the work of reviews, and it would split half the work for 90% of the market, half the work for the remaining 10% (round up on Linux marketshare to an even 2% and say it's maybe 5x more common amongst the AT crowd.)
stratum - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
Well, I want Linux content so I'm asking for it. If enough people ask nicely then maybe one day AnandTech will provide more Linux content.Also, it's not just the Linux crowd who talk about being "l33t" and all that. I see it a lot among PC builders (many of them comment here as well) who like adding useless LEDs to everything and talk about how cool their water cooling solution is especially because it has LEDs on it. The same with video encoding, video playback and anything where you can categorize yourself in. Whatever topic you talk about, there are always going to be a group of immature people who think they're superior to everyone else.
stratum - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
As for the whole market share thing. Just look at the articles here on AnandTech. What percent of the population or even just the readers of this site actually do OpenCL/CUDA programming, use 10 GbE NAS's and switches, rackmount anything, $5000 workstations, administrate servers, etc. yet AnandTech writes articles about them?shank15217 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
These things, NUC, BRIX, Nano would be so much more useful if they have 2 NICs!!signorBlu - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
Some Zotac ZBox models do have 2 NICs...barleyguy - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Any idea how this compares to a Mac Mini, in performance, power consumption, fan noise, and features? It seems like that would be a competing solution for many of the same uses.jason64 - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Yes, please hire a Linux guy for Linux articles. Also, have him come up with tests for integration with component and system reviews.Thank you.
NAC - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
In my opinion, these NUC computers are still way too expensive for what you get. For less than $680, you can get a laptop with i5, a SSD, memory and wifi - not to mention the screen, keyboard, battery, operating system installed, optical drive if you want, and ability to use it anywhere when you want. Granted, a laptop is much bigger and heavier. But if you are willing and able to build a NUC, you can easily build a small shelf for a laptop in the back of a desk or somewhere, hidden out of sight just like a NUC.When I replaced my HTPC, I chose a refurbished i3 laptop for about $220 delivered. It is usually in a cabinet, and I can take it with me when I travel if I want.
Lundmark - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Well, I guess there will always be people arguing for hotdogs because they serve the same purpose as sirloin steak.Calista - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
For those of us with a big tv or projector having a small second screen make a lot of sense. If I only wish to play music, why should I have my 60" tv turned on? NAC is right, if a similar laptop is $500, why does the NUC cost more for less?