Intel NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon) Gaming Performance - A Second Look
by Ganesh T S on May 14, 2018 8:01 AM ESTFuturemark 3DMark
Futuremark's 3DMark comes with a diverse set of workloads that target different Direct3D feature levels. Correspondingly, the rendering resolutions are also different. In this section, we take a look at the performance of the Intel NUC8i7HVK (Hades Canyon) on a comparative basis across the different workloads.
3DMark Ice Storm
This workload has three levels of varying complexity - the vanilla Ice Storm, Ice Storm Unlimited, and Ice Storm Extreme. It is a cross-platform benchmark (which means that the scores can be compared across different tablets and smartphones as well). All three use DirectX 11 (feature level 9) / OpenGL ES 2.0. While the Extreme renders at 1920 x 1080, the other two render at 1280 x 720. The graphs below present the various Ice Storm worloads' numbers for different systems that we have evaluated.
Futuremark 3DMark - Ice Storm Workloads | |||
The trend we see here - the Hades Canyon NUC almost catching up with the GTX 1060-equipped ASRock DeskMini Z370, but, not quite able to surpass it consistently - is something that we will see throughout the rest of this article.
3DMark Cloud Gate
The Cloud Gate workload is meant for notebooks and typical home PCs, and uses DirectX 11 (feature level 10) to render frames at 1280 x 720. The graph below presents the overall score for the workload across all the systems that are being compared. In this workload, the CPU power also comes into play, allowing Hades Canyon to overtage the ZBOX MAGNUS EK71080. However, the rest of the systems come with much more powerful CPUs, allowing them to leapfrog the Hades Canyon NUC easily.
3DMark Sky Diver
The Sky Diver workload is meant for gaming notebooks and mid-range PCs, and uses DirectX 11 (feature level 11) to render frames at 1920 x 1080. The graph below presents the overall score for the workload across all the systems that are being compared.
3DMark Fire Strike Extreme
The Fire Strike benchmark has three workloads. The base version is meant for high-performance gaming PCs. Similar to Sky Diver, it uses DirectX 11 (feature level 11) to render frames at 1920 x 1080. The Ultra version targets 4K gaming system, and renders at 3840 x 2160. However, we only deal with the Extreme version in our benchmarking - It renders at 2560 x 1440, and targets multi-GPU systems and overclocked PCs. The graph below presents the overall score for the Fire Strike Extreme benchmark across all the systems that are being compared.
3DMark Time Spy
The Time Spy workload has two levels with different complexities. Both use DirectX 12 (feature level 11). However, the plain version targets high-performance gaming PCs with a 2560 x 1440 render resolution, while the Extreme version renders at 3840 x 2160 resolution. The graphs below present both numbers for all the systems that are being compared in this review.
Futuremark 3DMark - Time Spy Workloads | |||
In this DirectX 12 benchmark, we see the expected ordering on the basis of the GPU capabilities - the RX Vega M GH comes slightly behind the GTX 1060, but, is handily surpassed by the systems with the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080.
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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?