Intel Hades Canyon NUC Benchmarks Leak

DooKey

DooKey

[H]F Junkie
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Ever since the news came out about the Intel/AMD partnership a lot of us have wondered how this melding of technology was going to perform. If the leaks from a Korean site are anything to go by then it appears that this little box will have pretty good 1080p performance in games. Of course the sample size is small so you have to take this with a little bit of salt, but the leak (if true) does show nice performance coming from such a small package. However, what will make this little NUC a true gaming success is the right price.

Korean hardware site Playwares has posted the first benchmarks of Hades Canyon, which in this case is powered by a Core i7-8809G processor. This particular chip comes integrated with the most powerful version of AMD's Radeon RX Vega M, the "GH" SKU. With that in mind, take a look at the benchmarks below to get a feel for what kind of gaming performance to expect.
 
Nuc are cool and all but they are just too damn expansive. I am fine paying half the price for itx build.
 
The intel engineers basically said that they are at the thermal limit for this design with Skull Canyon (the current version of this design). So, the only way for this to be more powerful is for it to be more efficient.
 
I switched our organization to NUCs (gen 6 and now gen 7) , they are much more expensive than brand towers and overkill for a simple office worker (with SSD and 8gb ram)
but i cannot remember when i heard someone complain about a slow PC , workplace looks better, and i can send a guy with 10 units on a bike to set up on a remote branch.
 
T_A said:
I switched our organization to NUCs (gen 6 and now gen 7) , they are much more expensive than brand towers and overkill for a simple office worker (with SSD and 8gb ram)
but i cannot remember when i heard someone complain about a slow PC , workplace looks better, and i can send a guy with 10 units on a bike to set up on a remote branch.
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That's awesome. I work for a company with the word "computer" in the name and we have some old, hand me down Lenovo laptops with 3 GB of ram and hard drives. We do some onsite consulting work and some of my co-workers have actually had customers say "You work for a COMPUTER company?" when they saw our crappy machines.

Your not hiring are you? ;)
 
Spire3660 said:
The intel engineers basically said that they are at the thermal limit for this design with Skull Canyon (the current version of this design). So, the only way for this to be more powerful is for it to be more efficient.
Click to expand...

From what I've seen--I have a Skull Canyon--one thing they did is upgrade from one blower fan to two. The heat sink looks more robust, too.

I'm sure in all the reviews coming out people will be screaming about how this is a stupid product and you could build a cheaper computer.

But look, this is a freaking full-on DTR that'll also be a decent gaming machine, and it's the size of a paperback, and you can take it anywhere you have a keyboard and monitor!
 
Spire3660 said:
thermal limit
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I see a lot of people freaking about about how hot this runs--and saw the same freakouts with the Skull Canyon. The thing is, at 90+C, it still doesn't throttle. Believe them or not, but Intel claims that 90+C (I forget the actual stated limit) is perfectly fine.
 
90C actually is fine if you're not pushing stability limits in terms of clocks and voltages. Also, that is an aggregate temperature- the reason you want lower temperatures for overclocking is that certain parts of the CPU/GPU are stressed more, and these are the parts that if measured discretely would exhibit temperatures that inhibit stability.
 
NUCs are cute and neat and they cost a ton. I was trying to find a cheap one to put in a mini-MAME cabinet... even the i3 ones are pricey. Rpi 3 won that round.
 
Burticus said:
NUCs are cute and neat and they cost a ton. I was trying to find a cheap one to put in a mini-MAME cabinet... even the i3 ones are pricey. Rpi 3 won that round.
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LOL, no, the Atom based NUCs are vastly superior to RPI. Its not even close. The NIC in the NUC alone is worth the upgrade. I have both and ran both on openELEC/Kodi. Atom-based NUCs smash Rpi3s.
 
Spire3660 said:
LOL, no, the Atom based NUCs are vastly superior to RPI. Its not even close. The NIC in the NUC alone is worth the upgrade. I have both and ran both on openELEC/Kodi. Atom-based NUCs smash Rpi3s.
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Yes, the Atom has more performance than ARMv8 Cortex A53 but Burticus was not suggesting that ARM SoC beats Intel Atom in performance... just for what his goal was that the RPi 3 with ARMv8 w/ 1024MB of memory is at a much lower price point and fulfills his needs in the goal or niche Burticus needed filled.

I don't think anyone thinks ARMv8 is more powerful in MIPS than Intel's various Atom implementations.
 
T_A said:
I switched our organization to NUCs (gen 6 and now gen 7) , they are much more expensive than brand towers and overkill for a simple office worker (with SSD and 8gb ram)
but i cannot remember when i heard someone complain about a slow PC , workplace looks better, and i can send a guy with 10 units on a bike to set up on a remote branch.
Click to expand...


Honestly I recommend the Dell / Lenovo micro's (Dell 3050's and Lenovo m710's). We pick the i5 model/ 8gb ram/ 256 gig ssd models. The m710's we picked came with pm961's. I'm not sure what the generic 3050's come with but the 3040's we got came with the equivalent samsung 850 models.
 
T_A said:
I switched our organization to NUCs (gen 6 and now gen 7) , they are much more expensive than brand towers and overkill for a simple office worker (with SSD and 8gb ram)
but i cannot remember when i heard someone complain about a slow PC , workplace looks better, and i can send a guy with 10 units on a bike to set up on a remote branch.
Click to expand...

That's pretty nifty and I think would be a great solution for most users, however small size means possibility of potential theft and you have to lock the suckers down. I wonder if Intel has proper enterprise management and bios configuration tools for these as they are not intended as business computers.
 
While not immediately applicable (we're using i3 NUCs), they've been great computers to put out in the shop. A few get upfitted with new WiFi antenna connectors so we can fit bigger external antenna on them. I'd say our company is using in excess of 300 of the NUCs, and we just added at least 60 more in the past 2 months for a new branch.

I can't wait for these to come out...but I can wait for what their price will be! We'd happily buy more of these for our non-engineering office users, as the i3 models have been overkill, performance wise, for at least 75% of our desktop users.

I picked one of the i3 models up for myself to use as a personal ESXi server, and I'd love to upgrade to one of these. That 2nd NIC will be really useful for me. If anything, I couldn't care less about the GPU, but I'm sure I'd find a use for it...but to be honest, for the cost of these, I'd be looking at an ITX model. These quad core models are going to be hard pills to swallow, although once the 4" square quad i7s come out, you bet your ass I'm picking one up to upgrade from my i3.
 
1_rick said:
From what I've seen--I have a Skull Canyon--one thing they did is upgrade from one blower fan to two. The heat sink looks more robust, too.

I'm sure in all the reviews coming out people will be screaming about how this is a stupid product and you could build a cheaper computer.

But look, this is a freaking full-on DTR that'll also be a decent gaming machine, and it's the size of a paperback, and you can take it anywhere you have a keyboard and monitor!
Click to expand...

As someone who has caught the SFF bug over the last couple of years this is pretty much the only reason I have any interest in these. A spendy but TINY all around machine that can game as well. That's pretty terrific and if you get a nice wireless KB/mouse its a great travel machine using the TV in the Resort/Hotel for the monitor or Living/Media room PC that is stealth AF.

Unless it sets the shelf on fire from running so freaking hot..;). Curious to see how the reviews pan out.
 
Neat, that's the same logo on my intel extreme z77 mobo. They abandoned that market which is fine, but they also abandoned me and my 3770 and wont patch their vulnerabilities, which they could easily fix by outsourcing to competent people.

So I'm abandoning them.
 
risc said:
Neat, that's the same logo on my intel extreme z77 mobo. They abandoned that market which is fine, but they also abandoned me and my 3770 and wont patch their vulnerabilities, which they could easily fix by outsourcing to competent people.

So I'm abandoning them.
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lol
 
wish our company would go to these, it's not in the budget, but I really don't like the WYSE terminals we use now for most things. we have rolling workstations, and (sometimes) they crap out and lock up every time you go from one Wifi router to another.
 
Spire3660 said:
LOL, no, the Atom based NUCs are vastly superior to RPI. Its not even close. The NIC in the NUC alone is worth the upgrade. I have both and ran both on openELEC/Kodi. Atom-based NUCs smash Rpi3s.
Click to expand...

Hey I'm a fan of the NUC design, just not the cost. No doubt the NUC whoops on a Rpi, but the Rpi3 was $50 all in (with a sd card and a case) vs $300+ for the i3 nuc ($220 + ram + ssd). For my emulator box, no brainer. Would I want to use a Rpi as a desktop? Nah. I mean, technically I guess you could, but no thanks. I also have a Rpi2 that runs Kodi adequately. These applications don't scream for massive CPU power.

Yossarian22 said:
Yes, the Atom has more performance than ARMv8 Cortex A53 but Burticus was not suggesting that ARM SoC beats Intel Atom in performance... just for what his goal was that the RPi 3 with ARMv8 w/ 1024MB of memory is at a much lower price point and fulfills his needs in the goal or niche Burticus needed filled. I don't think anyone thinks ARMv8 is more powerful in MIPS than Intel's various Atom implementations.
Click to expand...

What he said... :)
 
Yossarian22 said:
Yes, the Atom has more performance than ARMv8 Cortex A53 but Burticus was not suggesting that ARM SoC beats Intel Atom in performance... just for what his goal was that the RPi 3 with ARMv8 w/ 1024MB of memory is at a much lower price point and fulfills his needs in the goal or niche Burticus needed filled.

I don't think anyone thinks ARMv8 is more powerful in MIPS than Intel's various Atom implementations.
Click to expand...

The Atom-based intel NUCs, fully deployed cost about $80-$120 more than a fully deployed RPi3 including a nice case (the NUCs cases are all metal). I ran both, and to me the price delta was absolutely worth it.
 
Apart from the immense price of NUC (since it comes with very little out of the box), the problem I have with these "cute" small devices is that once you've added cabling, they aren't that cute anymore. In fact, it actually looks worse than most desktops.
 
cjcox said:
Apart from the immense price of NUC (since it comes with very little out of the box), the problem I have with these "cute" small devices is that once you've added cabling, they aren't that cute anymore. In fact, it actually looks worse than most desktops.
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They come with VESA mounts in the box...My Atom based NUC cost $150 including RAM and a SD card for the OS. IT looks 10 times better than any RPi3 case. I know , i have looked. A comparable milled aluminum case for RPi was $75 last time i looked.
 
I've looked at NUCs and I think they have their own niche market. IMO, NUCs are perfect for labs, libraries, offices, and the likes where the uses are not specialized but rather general and space is at a premium.

Where I work, the labs are ~10 years old PC... They're kicking the bucket soon but we don't have much budget for it [school] and I'm working on formulating a decent donation to the school to at least fund partially upgrades for our labs / offices. It's silly how far behind we are. We're running Win 10 on P4, 1st Gen Core CPUs with 2GB system ram...
 
TheHig said:
Unless it sets the shelf on fire from running so freaking hot
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Seems pretty unlikely unless you're pointing the exhaust at a bucket of oily rags. Having said that, I make a point of positioning mine so that it has plenty of open space behind the fan.
 
cjcox said:
Apart from the immense price of NUC (since it comes with very little out of the box), the problem I have with these "cute" small devices is that once you've added cabling, they aren't that cute anymore. In fact, it actually looks worse than most desktops.
Click to expand...

Well, at least you can (in theory) attach it to the VESA mounting point on your monitor and hide it.

The, if you use a wireless keyboard and mouse, as someone mentioned above, you've really only got 2 cables.
 
1_rick said:
Well, at least you can (in theory) attach it to the VESA mounting point on your monitor and hide it.

The, if you use a wireless keyboard and mouse, as someone mentioned above, you've really only got 2 cables.
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you can get VESA mounts for Mac Minis like this, the NUC is Intel's mac mini, and not a bad idea, very handy for people that need that small footprint.
 
1_rick said:
Well, at least you can (in theory) attach it to the VESA mounting point on your monitor and hide it.

The, if you use a wireless keyboard and mouse, as someone mentioned above, you've really only got 2 cables.
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yes, that is very true, or under desk, etc. You're right. But still WAY over priced.
 
Powerage said:
Build a comparable itx system then. Feel free to post the specs so we can all see it.
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The problem is lack of memory and storage out of the box. That's where the price difference comes in (well, mainly). You'll easily pay $200-300+ more for any NUC system (btw, that "more" includes more than what you'd pay for a Lenovo Tiny).
 
cjcox said:
. But still WAY over priced.
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Meh. Portability always costs more.

Plus, the Skull Canyon's seen drastic price cuts. I had the misfortune to buy mine at full ($650) price just enough before the first price cuts that the price-matching guarantees had expired. Newegg sells it for $550 now, and you can regularly see it on Fry's for, IIRC, $500.

To add to Powerage's comment ("build a comparable itx system"), go ahead, and then let us know if you can stick it in your pocket and bring it to work. :)

It's not for everyone! That's fine! But it's not stupid, like a bunch of haters keep saying.
 
Look, I'm just pointing out that in pretty much all cases, this is going to be the most expensive solution. But ultimately, it's your choice how you spend your money.
 
cjcox said:
Look, I'm just pointing out that in pretty much all cases, this is going to be the most expensive solution. But ultimately, it's your choice how you spend your money.
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Based on the performance its probably less of a premium in price than you think.

i7-7700 = $300
Adequate Heatsink = $25-30
H270 itx mobo = around $85 realistically
itx Case = $50-80 or so
High Quality power supply = starts at $40-50
GPU between 1050ti and 1060 3GB at current prices = $230 - 360

300+30+85+80+50+230 = $740 for similar itx tower "barebones" with average price 1050ti
300+30+85+80+50+360 = $870 for similar itx tower "barebones" with average price 1060 3GB.

So with current GPU prices you are paying a $~150 price premium for one of the smallest gaming boxes you could build.

This doesn't even bring up the special features you won't find most other places like dual thunderbolt3, dual server grade nics (219-LM and 210-AT), quad beamforming microphone array, consumer infrared, and probably some others i might be missing.
 
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