Intel's latest "NUC" - HD Graphics - Seriously?

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TheDarkKnight

Senior member
Jan 20, 2011
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Man, Intel's latest NUC looked like a really sweet deal until I seen what types of graphics it has. HD Graphics - okay but what generation - are they seriously trying to give us all first gen HD graphics in the latest NUC?

What the hell....surely not...is the HD Graphics 2000? 3000? 4000? 4400? You want me to use your first gen IGPU in your latest NUC. Somebody please tell me what part of stupid I am missing here?

Somebody with a brain at Intel seriously needs to start releasing better more balanced products. The CPU runs at 2.4GHz on this NUC and the one with HD 5000 graphics run at, how much, 1.8?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davealt...sidence-in-tiny-inexpensive-nuc-diy-computer/
 
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Wreckem

Diamond Member
Sep 23, 2006
9,458
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TheDarkKnight said:
Man, Intel's latest NUC looked like a really sweet deal until I seen what types of graphics it has. HD Graphics - okay but what generation - are they seriously trying to give us all first gen HD graphics in the latest NUC?

What the hell....surely not...is the HD Graphics 2000? 3000? 4000? 4400? You want me to use your first gen IGPU in your latest NUC. Somebody please tell me what part of stupid I am missing here?

Somebody with a brain at Intel seriously needs to start releasing better more balanced products. The CPU runs at 2.4GHz on this NUC and the one with HD 5000 graphics run at, how much, 1.8?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davealt...sidence-in-tiny-inexpensive-nuc-diy-computer/
Click to expand...

What you are missing is this latest NUC is meant to be the lowest end, as in least costly and lowest performance, NUC. Priced at $139 retail.

The ones with HD 5000 run at 1.3 but can go up to and sustain 2.6 if they need it. But those are haswell based processors. The chip in this budget NUC is based on Intel's latest atom chip. In this case HD Graphics means a cut down version of the current gen HD Graphic cores, ie: cut down version of 7th gen Ivy based HD graphics, not first gen HD Graphics. In Anandtechs Preview of Bay Trail they stated this, "Rather than 16 EUs in the Ivy Bridge GT2 configuration (HD 4000), Bay Trail’s HD Graphics core ships with 4. The 4 EUs are otherwise effectively identical to what we found in Ivy". Based on that statement, you can surmise the graphics core in this NUC is substantially slower than the ones with HD 5000 graphic cores. The later has 10 times the number of execute units(4 vs 40).
 
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T

tcsenter

Lifer
Sep 7, 2001
18,373
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What else do you need for a file server, media center, POS, kiosk, intranet, internet, or industrial PC??
 
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TheDarkKnight

Senior member
Jan 20, 2011
321
4
81
Wreckem said:
What you are missing is this latest NUC is meant to be the lowest end, as in least costly and lowest performance, NUC. Priced at $139 retail.

The ones with HD 5000 run at 1.3 but can go up to and sustain 2.6 if they need it. But those are haswell based processors. The chip in this budget NUC is based on Intel's latest atom chip. In this case HD Graphics means a cut down version of the current gen HD Graphic cores, ie: cut down version of 7th gen Ivy based HD graphics, not first gen HD Graphics. In Anandtechs Preview of Bay Trail they stated this, "Rather than 16 EUs in the Ivy Bridge GT2 configuration (HD 4000), Bay Trail’s HD Graphics core ships with 4. The 4 EUs are otherwise effectively identical to what we found in Ivy". Based on that statement, you can surmise the graphics core in this NUC is substantially slower than the ones with HD 5000 graphic cores. The later has 10 times the number of execute units(4 vs 40).
Click to expand...

So you would have me believe that HD Graphics are 7th generation? I call B.S. on that one. The numbers behind the "HD" designation mean something. Just because the "HD" graphics technology is sitting on a 4th generation core CPU does it make 7th generation graphics. Baloney.
 
ShintaiDK

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
TheDarkKnight said:
So you would have me believe that HD Graphics are 7th generation? I call B.S. on that one. The numbers behind the "HD" designation mean something. Just because the "HD" graphics technology is sitting on a 4th generation core CPU does it make 7th generation graphics. Baloney.
Click to expand...

Well you are wrong. Its it is a 7 generation GPU.

intel_graphics_roadmap.png


http://www.anandtech.com/show/4585/...11-increased-professional-application-support

CTT-GFX2.png
 
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Talaii

Member
Feb 13, 2011
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0
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TheDarkKnight said:
So you would have me believe that HD Graphics are 7th generation? I call B.S. on that one. The numbers behind the "HD" designation mean something. Just because the "HD" graphics technology is sitting on a 4th generation core CPU does it make 7th generation graphics. Baloney.
Click to expand...

It's the same architecture as the ivy bridge graphics - same cores, same basic concept. Just less of it (4 rather than 6 (HD 2500)/16 (HD 4000)). Nobody is trying to argue that it is as powerful as the full-fat Ivy Bridge HD 4000.
 
T_Yamamoto

T_Yamamoto

Lifer
Jul 6, 2011
15,007
795
126
TheDarkKnight said:
Man, Intel's latest NUC looked like a really sweet deal until I seen what types of graphics it has. HD Graphics - okay but what generation - are they seriously trying to give us all first gen HD graphics in the latest NUC?

What the hell....surely not...is the HD Graphics 2000? 3000? 4000? 4400? You want me to use your first gen IGPU in your latest NUC. Somebody please tell me what part of stupid I am missing here?

Somebody with a brain at Intel seriously needs to start releasing better more balanced products. The CPU runs at 2.4GHz on this NUC and the one with HD 5000 graphics run at, how much, 1.8?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davealt...sidence-in-tiny-inexpensive-nuc-diy-computer/
Click to expand...
Thats like saying netbooks need gpus
 
Sunburn74

Sunburn74

Diamond Member
Oct 5, 2009
5,027
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Do you guys think this little box is capable of serving as a full fledged HTPC? Pure 1080p streaming and video playback?
 
crashtestdummy

crashtestdummy

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2010
2,893
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Sunburn74 said:
Do you guys think this little box is capable of serving as a full fledged HTPC? Pure 1080p streaming and video playback?
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It should have no problem with that. If you needed something for recording or encoding, it'd be a little slow, but for playback it's fine. Hell, even my Raspberry Pi can handle 1080p playback.
 
ravana

ravana

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2002
2,149
1
76
I was just looking at NUCs and noticed the first generation one with thunderbolt is now $175. Which means with 8 GB RAM and a 120 GB mSATA drive. I can have one up and running with OpenELEC for about $380.

I am mainly looking to run XBMC (or 2 instances...one on each tv) and a PVR backend with an HDHomeRun.

Go for first gen or spend the extra $150 on the Haswell i3 NUC or $250 on the Haswell i5 NUC?
 
IntelUser2000

IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
3,785
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TheDarkKnight said:
So you would have me believe that HD Graphics are 7th generation? I call B.S. on that one. The numbers behind the "HD" designation mean something. Just because the "HD" graphics technology is sitting on a 4th generation core CPU does it make 7th generation graphics. Baloney.
Click to expand...

Oh boy. It's basic marketing.

Intel wants you to buy higher end chips with HD Graphics 4xxx/Iris, rather than plain "HD Graphics". That's why they name it like that.

There's 3 versions of HD Graphics:
-Outdated one in the first generation Core
-Atom "Bay Trail" based cores(certain Celeron/Pentium chips are based on Bay Trail as well)
-Core-based Celerons and Pentiums

However, the performance range is all different. AMD/Nvidia does the same thing. They use the exact same chip and change the video card name from 7000 series to 8000 series.

But they all use similar architecture, Gen 7 for the HD Graphics on the Atom and little better Gen 7.5 for Core. It's better to use a newer architecture and make a smaller version because its better for number of reasons: power efficiency, die area($$$), performance
 
H

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
17
81
ravana said:
I was just looking at NUCs and noticed the first generation one with thunderbolt is now $175. Which means with 8 GB RAM and a 120 GB mSATA drive. I can have one up and running with OpenELEC for about $380.

I am mainly looking to run XBMC (or 2 instances...one on each tv) and a PVR backend with an HDHomeRun.

Go for first gen or spend the extra $150 on the Haswell i3 NUC or $250 on the Haswell i5 NUC?
Click to expand...


ive had a really hard time justifying these things. i mean i think they are cool definitely

but you can buy ahaswell laptop (albeit say with 4gb of ram and a hard drive) for about the cost of outfitting one of the haswell units, because m-sata has a premium to sata drives etc. haswell laptops are routinely $350 for a core i3 and 4gb with say a 320/500gb drive.

the bay trail unit at least you can use a normal sata drive out of the box, and you don't have to buy a wifi card so, $130 + $30 for 4gb ram, a hard drive / ssd there really isn't some laptop for it to look bad against.
 
T

TheDarkKnight

Senior member
Jan 20, 2011
321
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81
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crashtestdummy

crashtestdummy

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2010
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TheDarkKnight said:
No hardware decoding capabilities??? You might wanna rethink that statement!!!

http://missingremote.com/news/2014-01-30/baytrail-dn2820fykh-no-intel-clear-video-hd-support
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You've got a lot of anger for some reason. Not sure any of this stuff is worth getting that worked up over.

The "Clear Video HD" is a specific package that includes decoding as well as video post-processing (de-interlacing, etc.). I'm guessing the latter part is gone, but I'd be shocked if there isn't support for H.264 and MPEG 2, at least. As I said, even my $35 Raspberry Pi supports that.
 
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lakedude

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2009
2,582
338
126
Found it:

Intel NUC Board DN2820FY Technical Product Specification

1.5.1.1 Intel® High Definition (Intel® HD) Graphics
The Intel HD graphics controller features the following:
• HDMI 1.4
• 3D graphics hardware acceleration supporting DirectX*11, OCL 1.2, OGL ES Halti/2.0/1.1, OGL 3.2
• Video decode hardware acceleration supporting H.264, MPEG2, MVC, VC-1, WMV9 and VP8 formats
• Video encode hardware acceleration supporting H.264, MPEG2 and MVC formats
• High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) 1.4/2.1 support for content protection
 
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TheDarkKnight

Senior member
Jan 20, 2011
321
4
81
crashtestdummy said:
You've got a lot of anger for some reason. Not sure any of this stuff is worth getting that worked up over.

The "Clear Video HD" is a specific package that includes decoding as well as video post-processing (de-interlacing, etc.). I'm guessing the latter part is gone, but I'd be shocked if there isn't support for H.264 and MPEG 2, at least. As I said, even my $35 Raspberry Pi supports that.
Click to expand...

Angry? No, simply looking for understanding. I don't like to be deceived in my product purchases. And furthermore, I posted a link to an article claiming that these latest NUCs lack the ability to "decode" blu-ray movies. So, thats why I posted a link with a follow-up question. I am glad to hear that there is hardware decode support for H.264 codec. Still, I do believe now that the HD graphics we are talking about are 7th generation. So that there are additional features that come with that 7th generation architecture. But, in my reality, how much value do they add when crippled by such a small number of EUs. It's neat that Intel allows us to say, "Yeah, my NUC supports direct x 11.2. Oh, but guess what, it supports it with 4 EUs. Whoopie doo."

It's a mixed bag for me. Still, the price seems right considering how crippled the product is compared to the other members in the latest generation of NUC devices. My best strategy is to wait for some benchmarks to make any final purchasing decisions.
 
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FwFred

Member
Sep 8, 2011
149
7
81
TheDarkKnight said:
I would but...no gigabit ethernet port??? Seriously again. And no power cord with all first generation units. Pass. *sigh* I guess the SFF world isn't all it's cracked up to be. :)
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Yes, this is the thunderbolt version rather than the ethernet version. A USB3 NIC would still be cheaper unless you were looking for a specific mounting/display which wouldn't prefer that.

I mentioned this one because many people are using WiFi, since they tend to place these things in places which aren't convenient for wired.
 
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FwFred

Member
Sep 8, 2011
149
7
81
Maximilian said:
Lmao even the raspberry pi has an ethernet! Model B anyways.
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- MacBooks have no ethernet and don't seem to be comical
- Raspberry Pi also has a no ethernet model
- NUC's do offer an ethernet model

What's the problem? SFF obviously has tradeoffs.
 
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