Bean Canyon vs Crimson Canyon (Iris 655 vs Radeon RX540)

TheDarkKnight

Senior member
Jan 20, 2011
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I'm wondering which of the two new NUCs are the better buy.

NUC 8i3CYSM/N or NUC8i5BEH/K

It's pretty much a given that the Radeon RX540 blows the Iris 655) graphics out of the water if it were based upon the specs of the iGPUs alone. But the reason I have to wonder which NUC is better is because I've read some complaints about the fact that Intel has used an off-die graphics solution for the Crimson Canyon NUCs only so they can make the claim that they have 10nm products.

The 8i3CYSM/N uses the Core i3-8121U mobile processor showing a maximum theoretical memory bandwidth of 41.6 GB/sec:
https://ark.intel.com/products/136863/Intel-Core-i3-8121U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3-20-GHz-

The NUC 8i5BEH/K uses the Core i5-8259U shows a maxium theoretical memory bandwidth of 37.5 GB/sec:
https://ark.intel.com/products/135935/Intel-Core-i5-8259U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3-80-GHz-

Obviously the 4C/8T CPU would be faster in certain workloads. But if you were purchasing the NUC for casual gaming would the 2C/4T NUC with the discrete Radeon RX 540 be even better?

I'm kinda confused as to why the bandwidth of the 2C/4T CPU is higher than the 4C/8T CPU when the 8259U runs faster at base and turbo speeds.