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Intel Reveals Unlocked, Socketed Broadwell and Core i7 NUC With Iris Graphics
MojoKid writes Intel held an event at a location adjacent to GDC last night, where the company discussed some updates to its 5th Gen Core processor line-up, Intel graphics developments, the Intel Hardware SDK, and its various game developer tools. Chris Silva, Director of Marketing for Premium Notebook and Client Graphics teams disclosed a few details that a socketed, unlocked, 65W desktop processor based on Intel's Broadwell architecture, featuring Iris graphics, is due to arrive sometime in mid-2015. It's noteworthy because this will be Intel's first desktop CPU with Iris Pro graphics and because it is multiplier unlocked. It will be interesting to see what Iris Pro can do with some overclocking. Intel then showed off a new NUC mini PC powered by a 28W, quad-core Core i7 Broadwell processor, which also featured Iris graphics. The device has a tiny .63 liter enclosure with support for high-performance M.2 solid state drives and features an array of built-in IO options, like USB3, BT4, and 802.11ac WiFi. Bryan Langley, Principal PM for Windows Graphics also talked a bit about DirectX 12, disclosing that the company would be ready with DX12 support when Windows 10 arrives and that there are optimizations in DX12 and their drivers that would deliver performance enhancements to current and future Intel graphics platforms.
Those Intel NUC makes the Apple Mac mini look like an Apple Mac Maxi.
Except the Mac Mini includes a built-in power supply, while the NUC needs an external power brick half as big as the computer.
Maybe this new processor will mean the future return of the quad-core mini, though.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Problem is this NUC with a quad i7, 16gb ram and 256gb SSD costs a lot more than the mac mini in the same configuration.
I though Intel was supposed to be better performance at lower prices than apple.
A Mac Mini with those specs costs $1400 with gen4 intel processors (will probably be the same price when gen5 is released). I didn't see any prices for the Intel versions but it will likely be under $1400.
The 4th gen i7 Intel NUC is $400 after rebate from Amazon right now. Add 16 GB of SODIMM RAM for $150 and a 256GB SSD for $200 (both are high figures) and you have a Mac Mini equivalent for $750. I might be missing something, but probably not $650 worth of missed items.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
My first D54250WYKH couldn't even get through the OS install. It had IO errors that were unrecoverable every time. The second NUC would consistently take a Kubuntu install but has intermittent kernel panics and reboots for seemingly no reason. And it near bricks using any kind of suspend mode in Linux - everyone is having that problem. You have to disassemble the whole NUC and pull the CMOS battery to get it to boot after any sort of suspend. Suspend is pretty important because these small cases use small, loud fans. Just a modern desktop, an idling modern desktop, is enough load on the GPU to throttle up the fan to full RPM.
I posted about my troubles on the NUC forums, along with many others. Intel says they don't officially support Linux so it's on you to fix. That's interesting because they sell the NUC with no OS. If it's intended to be windows only they should sell it with windows. Also in the firmware notes they talk about fixing a bug that was effecting Openelec, so obviously Linux is part of their testing.