Intel "Hades Canyon" NUC Armed with Vega M Plays Anything at 1080p

[btarunr]

Intel's upcoming "Hades Canyon" NUC, the spiritual successor to the company's "Skull Canyon" NUC; will be one of the first commercial implementations of the "Kaby Lake-G" multi-chip module, which puts an AMD Radeon Vega M graphics part and a quad-core "Kaby Lake" die together on a package, along with 4 GB of HBM2 memory for the GPU, when they start shipping in Spring 2018, priced between $799-$999. Korean tech publication Playwares got its hands on one of these, and its testing suggests that it achieves the key design goal of Kaby Lake-G: to be able to play any of today's games at 1080p (with acceptable levels of eye-candy.)

Playwares put "Hades Canyon" through three of today's AAA game titles that take advantage of DirectX 12: "Rise of the Tomb Raider," "Tom Clancy's The Division," and "Total War: Warhammer 2." At default clocks, and 1080p resolution, "Rise of the Tomb Raider" puts out around 53 fps, with 45.36 fps (minimum, 99th percentile). When overclocked, the chip averages 59.11 fps, with 50.5 fps (minimum, 99th percentile). "The Division" averages 41.5 fps at default clocks, and 46.8 fps when overclocked. "Warhammer 2" is a lot more taxing on the chip - 27.3 fps average and 23 fps minimum at default clocks, and 30.1 average with 26 fps minimum, when overclocked. One has to take into account that the "Vega M" chip on the Core i7-8709G is significantly more powerful than the iGPU of AMD's Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs - 1536 stream processors, 96 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 1024-bit HBM2 memory; versus 704 stream processors, 44 TMUs, 16 ROPs, and system memory share.



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[dj-electric]

This is truly a marvel of engineering. This much CPU+GPU horsepower to footprint ratio was science fiction not too long ago.
Good job Intel and AMD on this coop

 

[the54thvoid]

Looks like RX470/570 level of graphics looking back at previous TPU reviews. How does it fare on the majority of titles that are not DX12? Hopefully we'll see a solid review soon.

 

[kastriot]

It's more like irony 2 enemies make hybrid that benefit both of them.

 

[btarunr]

This is truly a marvel of engineering. This much CPU+GPU horsepower to footprint ratio was science fiction not too long ago.
Good job Intel and AMD on this coop

Take a reasonably high-end gaming notebook, take away its display, input devices, battery, and speakers; and what remains is roughly this big, and has more horsepower?

 

[Liviu Cojocaru]

Wow those are some amazing results, great chip all-together

 

[bug]

Isn't that GPU supposed to benefit from faster RAM? Overclocking just the CPU seems a bit pointless in the context.

 

[Chaitanya]

Isn't that GPU supposed to benefit from faster RAM? Overclocking just the CPU seems a bit pointless in the context.

GPU on Hades Canyon platform has dedicated HBM2 memory.

 

[bug]

GPU on Hades Canyon platform has dedicated HBM2 memory.

Ok, my bad.

 

[ppn]

the very same GPU exists in standalone substrate version without the CPU. The footprint would be the same with ryzen 3 1200 and sodimm. Thin mitx is totally possible. And better fit this on socket am4 together with quad ryzen, as what 2200g should have been.

 

[CosmicWanderer]

I wish there was a lower power 15-25W version for use in ultrabooks.

 

[bug]

I wish there was a lower power 15-25W version for use in ultrabooks.

Oh, I was worried for bit there people would have unrealistic expectations.
Not even Iris Pro could fit in that power envelope and that's a much weaker solution.

 

[T4C Fantasy]

Polaris M more like it xD

 

[CosmicWanderer]

Oh, I was worried for bit there people would have unrealistic expectations.
Not even Iris Pro could fit in that power envelope and that's a much weaker solution.

Define "wish".

 

[bug]

Define "wish".

Why? I didn't even use that term. You did.

 

[Ubersonic]

I wouldn't call 23 FPS playable lol, it's not 1996.

 

[CosmicWanderer]

Why? I didn't even use that term. You did.

Exactly.

I wouldn't call 23 FPS playable lol, it's not 1996.

Since it's 1080p on Ultra settings, my guess is that they're hinting that you could get over 30 fps if those settings are dialed down a bit.

 

[Jadawin]

That NUC kit costs 1.000 US-Dollar. Case closed.

 

[bug]

Exactly.

W-T-F?

 

[GhostRyder]

Cool, rather see it in a laptop over the NUC as just a personal preference but impressive none the less!!!

 

[zo0lykas]

Yeah i agree results are great, but price, like usual for intel.. Overpriced.

Wow those are some amazing results, great chip all-together

 

[Ruru]

I wouldn't call 23 FPS playable lol, it's not 1996.

Well there are people who say that GTX 1080 or Vega 64 is too slow. They think that 1080 Ti is the only option.

 

[Liviu Cojocaru]

Yeah i agree results are great, but price, like usual for intel.. Overpriced.

yes the price is very high but the results are still impressive, I believe that there will be a market for this...

 

[R0H1T]

How long before we see something like this in a console? Ryzen 2.0 octa (dodeca?) cores with Navi & 16GB HBM3

Everyone's happy ~ miners & gamers plus no shortage of dGPU, provided AMD releases something like this for desktop enthusiasts.

 

[tolzkutz]

It's sad AMD doesn't have the resources to develop a custom SoC like this one. Imagine R5 1400 instead of the Intel quad-core... the price would have been 150$ cheaper at least and a killer deal for laptops.