Intel Hades Canyon NUC8i7HVK Review: Pint-Sized Gaming Powerhouse

Intel NUC NUC8i7HVK Hades Canyon: JetStream, LAME, And Blender

Next up, we have some numbers from the JetStream Benchmark Suite developed by WebKit. The JetStream Benchmark Suite uses a wide array of latency and throughput benchmarks to evaluate JavaScript performance, and all of the results are tabulated with roughly equal weighting. The benchmark measures both metrics of traditional JavaScript programming styles used on websites, as well as new JavaScript-based technologies used on more modern, rich web applications. Scores in this benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing and running advanced web applications.

JetStream JavaScript Benchmark
JavsScript Performance Testing

All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean install of Windows 10 Professional x64.

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The NUC8i7HVK was sandwiched between the Ryzen 5 1600X and Core i5-7600 in the JetStream benchmark.

LAME MT
Audio Conversion and Encoding
In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a popular, day-to-day use case for many end users, to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. LAME is an open-source mid to high bit-rate and VBR (variable bit rate) MP3 audio encoder that is used widely around the world in a multitude of third party applications.

In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME MT application in single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below, listed in seconds. Shorter times equate to better performance.

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This benchmark is limited to one or two threads, so the Core i7-8809G processor at the heart of the NUC8i7HVK is able to crank up to it peak turbo frequency and burn through the workload here. As such, the machine finishes behind only the Core i7-8700K and is in a dead heat with the Core i5-8400.

Blender
3D Rendering Benchmark

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that can handle everything from modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. It has a built-in benchmarking tool that will track the time it takes to complete rendering a particular model. We used a CPU-focused BMW model for these tests here...

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The NUC8i7HVK put up a strong score in the Blender benchmark, especially considering the low-power, small form factor nature of the PC. Its render time was actually faster than the Ryzen 5 2400G, though it couldn't quite catch the Core i5-8400.

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