Intel NUC 12 Pro Wall Street Canyon Kits Review: Alder Lake in UCFF Avatar
by Ganesh T S on January 26, 2023 11:30 AM ESTSystem Performance: Multi-Tasking
One of the key drivers of advancments in computing systems is multi-tasking. On mobile devices, this is quite lightweight - cases such as background email checks while the user is playing a mobile game are quite common. Towards optimizing user experience in those types of scenarios, mobile SoC manufacturers started integrating heterogenous CPU cores - some with high performance for demanding workloads, while others were frugal in terms of both power consumption / die area and performance. This trend is now slowly making its way into the desktop PC space.
Multi-tasking in typical PC usage is much more demanding compared to phones and tablets. Desktop OSes allow users to launch and utilize a large number of demanding programs simultaneously. Responsiveness is dictated largely by the OS scheduler allowing different tasks to move to the background. Intel's Alder Lake processors work closely with the Windows 11 thread scheduler to optimize performance in these cases. Keeping these aspects in mind, the evaluation of multi-tasking performance is an interesting subject to tackle.
We have augmented our systems benchmarking suite to quantitatively analyze the multi-tasking performance of various platforms. The evaluation involves triggering a ffmpeg transcoding task to transform 1716 3840x1714 frames encoded as a 24fps AVC video (Blender Project's 'Tears of Steel' 4K version) into a 1080p HEVC version in a loop. The transcoding rate is monitored continuously. One complete transcoding pass is allowed to complete before starting the first multi-tasking workload - the PCMark 10 Extended bench suite. A comparative view of the PCMark 10 scores for various scenarios is presented in the graphs below. Also available for concurrent viewing are scores in the normal case where the benchmark was processed without any concurrent load, and a graph presenting the loss in performance.
| UL PCMark 10 Load Testing - Digital Content Creation Scores | |||
| UL PCMark 10 Load Testing - Productivity Scores | |||
| UL PCMark 10 Load Testing - Essentials Scores | |||
| UL PCMark 10 Load Testing - Gaming Scores | |||
| UL PCMark 10 Load Testing - Overall Scores | |||
The NUC 12 Pro kits manage to keep the same performance lead irrespective of the presence of the transcoding load.
Following the completion of the PCMark 10 benchmark, a short delay is introduced prior to the processing of Principled Technologies WebXPRT4 on MS Edge. Similar to the PCMark 10 results presentation, the graph below show the scores recorded with the transcoding load active. Available for comparison are the dedicated CPU power scores and a measure of the performance loss.
| Principled Technologies WebXPRT4 Load Testing Scores (MS Edge) | |||
The final workload tested as part of the multitasking evaluation routine is CINEBENCH R23.
| 3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R23 Load Testing - Single Thread Score | |||
| 3D Rendering - CINEBENCH R23 Load Testing - Multiple Thread Score | |||
The Alder Lake systems manage to maintain acceptable performance levels despite the presence of additional loading. Even in the cases where the percentage drop is high, the absolute performance number still manages to be better.
After the completion of all the workloads, we let the transcoding routine run to completion. The monitored transcoding rate throughout the above evaluation routine (in terms of frames per second) is graphed below for all three NUC 12 Pro kits.
| ffmpeg Transcoding Rate and Processor Usage | |||
| Intel NUC12WSKi7 ffmpeg Transcoding Rate (Multi-Tasking Test) | |||
| Task Segment | Transcoding Rate (FPS) | ||
| Minimum | Average | Maximum | |
| Transcode Start Pass | 4 | 13.03 | 40.5 |
| PCMark 10 | 0 | 11.53 | 37.5 |
| WebXPRT 4 | 3.5 | 11.1 | 21 |
| Cinebench R23 | 0 | 11.78 | 37 |
| Transcode End Pass | 3.5 | 12.96 | 39.5 |
| Intel NUC12WSKv7 ffmpeg Transcoding Rate (Multi-Tasking Test) | |||
| Task Segment | Transcoding Rate (FPS) | ||
| Minimum | Average | Maximum | |
| Transcode Start Pass | 4 | 12.55 | 42 |
| PCMark 10 | 0 | 11.12 | 35.5 |
| WebXPRT 4 | 3 | 10.58 | 21 |
| Cinebench R23 | 2 | 11.48 | 35 |
| Transcode End Pass | 3.5 | 12.4 | 38.5 |
| Intel NUC12WSBi70Z (Bleu Jour Meta 12) ffmpeg Transcoding Rate (Multi-Tasking Test) | |||
| Task Segment | Transcoding Rate (FPS) | ||
| Minimum | Average | Maximum | |
| Transcode Start Pass | 1.5 | 7.94 | 31.5 |
| PCMark 10 | 0 | 5.88 | 21.5 |
| WebXPRT 4 | 0 | 6.48 | 13.5 |
| Cinebench R23 | 0 | 5.94 | 23.5 |
| Transcode End Pass | 1 | 6.52 | 24 |
The NUC12WSKi7 kit with the Core i7-1260P performs the best in terms of raw numbers, but the Core i7-1270P has a lower loss in transcoding performance with additional loads in the picture. The Bleu Jour Meta 12 is heavily throttled and doesn't come anywhere near the performance numbers of the other two systems.
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timecop1818 - Thursday, January 26, 2023 - link
vPro is usually a price premium, as it allows fully remote management in corp environment.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, January 26, 2023 - link
It's great to see the puck nuc come back, I was worried they discontinue it. Shame they gimped it with DDR4 SODIMMS when DDR5 is widely available, especially at this price.Guess I'll wait for 14th gen when they actually jump on new memory types.
meacupla - Thursday, January 26, 2023 - link
Yeah, why would intel choose DDR4 on a platform like this? It makes zero sense.They had the option of DDR5SODIMM, DDR5CAMM, or LPDDR5, and they decide to go with DDR4SODIMM
abufrejoval - Sunday, January 29, 2023 - link
I just checked, 64GB of SO-DIMMs is still twice the price at DDR5 than DDR4. And the performance difference might be very minor for CPU workloads, especially in this form factor.Now I would like to have seen if it makes a difference for the iGPU, but then the Xe isn't meant for gaming either way.
LP variants require soldered RAM and that's one of the major advantages of this form factor: upgradable RAM. I run my NUCs as VM servers and 64GB is just a good fit for that. Try getting anything with 64GB of LPDDRx RAM!
And then again at a reasonable price.
James5mith - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
I have an i7-1165G7 based NUC used for my pfsense firewall. It's overkill, but it has the 2x 2.5GbE NICs I wanted for my firewall upgrade.Idles extremely low power, and never really gets stressed. For 10-15w I have a 2.5GbE capable firewall that is never stressed even when using IDS/IPS.
I wish they would release an i3 with 2x 2.5GbE at some point. It would be much more suited to the role.
Einy0 - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
The performance lag on the passive cooled version is a great example of how bad Intel's thermals have gotten. I used to put NUCs into passive cases half the size of the one used here, and they lost zero performance. It's really sad how far they've fallen.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
Are your specs for HDMI correct? I see HDMI 2.0 listed on some sites like Newegg but Intel's spec page says HDMI 2.1https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/s...
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/s...
PeachNCream - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
The problem with NUCs is that, after buying a screen, keyboard, and mouse, to get to a working system, you could have just purchased a laptop. NUCs don't offer mobility and aren't compelling from a performance perspective since they're using laptop-like TDP limits so you end up buying a desktop PC with laptop performance that you cannot use as flexibly as a laptop despite spending roughly the same amount. NUCs have niche uses, but the reason why they aren't popular is because that niche is rather narrow.white-hot - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
I have been using them for years as HTPC's in various locations in my house. In general they have been fine up until recently when I began streaming high bit-rate 4K video and they really don't like it. Granted they are all i3's of several generations old now, but other than that they do fine. I have a home media server that delivers video to these units, but rather than upgrade for 4K use I am currently trying plex via a fire stick and/or smart TV. The video stream is better but the interface is so slow. Not sure where I will end up, but having a NUC velcroed to the back of a TV has been very nice up till now.Hakaslak - Saturday, January 28, 2023 - link
Does Quick Sync work for you? Maybe a newer NUC with hardware accelerated transcoding would be what you're looking for? The new ones have 2 multi-format codec engines and quick synchttps://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/s...