Intel NUC5i5RYK Review: A Broadwell-U UCFF PC for Enthusiasts
by Ganesh T S on February 20, 2015 8:00 AM ESTGaming Benchmarks
Intel's integrated GPUs don't have a big name in the gaming community. Once in a while, Intel throws in a surprise. In the Haswell family, CPUs with Iris Pro graphics gave a pleasant surprise to casual gamers. In this section, we will identify whether the Intel HD Graphics 6000 in the Core i5-5250U can provide an acceptable gaming experience. It will also be interesting to determine whether HD 6000 can provide better numbers compared to the HD 5500 in the Core i7-5500U (BRIX s).
For the purpose of benchmarking, we chose four different games (Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite and DiRT Showdown) at three different quality levels. As someone focusing on HTPCs and multimedia aspects, I rarely get to process gaming benchmarks, even while evaluating GPUs. One of the aspects that I feared was spending lot of time in installing the same games again and again on different PCs under the review scanner. The solution was to go the Steam route. Unfortunately, Steam also likes to keep the game files updated. A quick online search revealed that Steam could make use of an external drive for storing the game executables and downloadable content. With the Steam drive on-the-go use-case being read-heavy, the Corsair Flash Voyager GS USB 3.0 128GB Flash Drive (with read speeds of up to 275 MBps) was ideal for use as a portable Steam drive.
Sleeping Dogs
Tomb Raider
Bioshock Infinite
DiRT Showdown
The gaming benchmarks, when considered as a showdown between the HD Graphics 5500 and HD Graphics 6000, is is a complete walkover for the former in the Core i7-5500U. Faster memory helps in salvaging a few FPS here and there, but the games are not fluid even with all settings dialed down. One aspect to be kept in mind while considering the above results is that the HD 5500 in the Core i7-5500U had accesses to DRAM running at 2133 MHz, while the HD 6000 in the NUC5i5RYK was limited to 1866 MHz.
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seanleeforever - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
true, i suppose if your requirement is to play 4K UHD video no matter what encoding used, then you really have to step up to a faster processor.duploxxx - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
fixed with carrizo which will launch pritty soon.StevoLincolnite - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
I must be the only person who is still using an Atom 330 from god-knows-how-many-years-ago.It's slow and it sucks.
But with a Broadcom Crystal HD, it does *everything* I have asked of it, which is maintain my library and playback movies.
One day I will upgrade... full-fledged Windows Tablets have now hit the $100 price point, you would think I could get a full blown Atom powered HTPC for half that, right? As it doesn't include a screen? Hahaha. Wrong.
kmmatney - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Yeah - I just bought a Winbook 10" tablet for $149 at Microcenter. Specs: 10" IPS screen, 32GB "SSD", 2GM RAM, Win 8.1., USB and mini HDMI port. Runs movies great, and great for internet browsing, runs my programming environment, and can even run Minecraft (with optifine). I have both an Android tablet (with high density display) and an iPad4, and I can't really say the display on the Winbook as any worse - pixel size is fine. I ended up selling my Android tablet, and would sell my iPad if the rest of the family would let me. This $149 tablet blows them both away. It could easily be an HTPC with a blue tooth keyboard and mouse. It's doesn't compare to a Core i5 in speed, but it's fast enough.Antronman - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
A $728 dollar build is easily going to fit the A10-7850kThe only advantage the NUC poses is power draw and operation volume.
Gadgety - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
For an HTPC which also would be used for light gaming, then I believe an AMD A8-7600 or the Carrizo version, in a passively cooled case is better than these Intel offerings. Mainly from a cost and size standpoint, as the Intel system would need a graphics card. For just movie/TV kind of usage then I believe the Intel offering handles the 23.976 better than AMD.yankeeDDL - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Carrizo will have full H.265 support in hardware. Usually that makes just the world of difference in terms of efficiency.BlueBlazer - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
But for Carrizo, does not mention support for VP9 (used by Google TV) or 10-bit H.265.Teknobug - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
In my experience, yes and no, enough power to play videos but hardly enough umph to do anything else. I tested an A4 5000, A6 1450, A8 5545M, A10 5750M and A10 7300, the A10's run hot but has a good enough GPU for low-mid range gaming and the lower end AMD's get beat out by Celeron N28** and Pentium N3530 and even the A8 gets beat out by i3's.Samus - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
The only downside of AMD htpc's is obviously higher power consumption. It will simply need more cooling. That may be negligible to you if a near silent fan in a quality case with proper ventilation is part of your build.I personally use a passive cooled shuttle j1900-based htpc. It has no moving parts, not even a fan. That was important to me because my TV room is dead silent... and I paid dearly for a clean amp to have no speaker hiss so having no fan noise is priceless.
People with a projector or less demanding requirements should save their money and just build an inexpensive AMD htpc.