Running The Intel NUC6i7KYK On Linux With Skylake Iris Pro Graphics

For those curious for some early benchmarks of the Intel NUC6i7KYK, so far I've conducted some basic tests with Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS, Ubuntu 16.10, and then Ubuntu 16.10 when switching to Linux 4.10-rc1 and Mesa 13.1-dev.

For users of Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580, overall the newer Linux kernel and Mesa do provide performance gains, but there are also cases of some performance regressions. More exploration via this result file. And then via this result file are some comparison tests of the Intel Core i7 5775C Broadwell Iris Pro 6200 graphics against this low-power NUC. The i7-5775C still offers better graphics performance for this socketed desktop CPU while the i7-6770HQ is interesting for its lower power budget allowing it to be used in smaller form factor setups and should be interesting to compare to Skylake HD Graphics. Of course, with either of those OpenBenchmarking.org result files you can compare your own system's performance against our numbers using the Phoronix Test Suite. On OpenBenchmarking.org are also more i6-6770HQ results.

Stay tuned for tests of the NUC6i7KYK from more Linux distributions as well as comparing the Core i7-6770HQ to other systems in the days ahead. So far though this Intel Skull Canyon NUC is playing well under Linux. Again, the base pricing on this NUC Mini PC is $525 USD.