MAY 2020 PCWorld 85assist in content creation tasks.
That’s because the CPUs in the Compute
Elements use standard Intel H-class
processors. This NUC does not feature
special, souped-up integrated graphics. You
only get vanilla Intel UHD Graphics that can’t
take you beyond powering multiple 4K
displays (up to three total).
In fact, we had to use 2015’s Rise of
the Tomb Raider as our first gaming test
because our attempt to start with 2017’s
Middle-earth: Shadow of War was flat-out
refused by the game. (We couldn’t run the
benchmark at a lower graphics setting,
because almost all of our comparison
machines have been returned to the
vendors and weren’t available for
new tests.)
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Traveling further back in time to 2014’s
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor doesn’t
change the story at all, even though the game
is less punishing than Rise of the Tomb Raider.
If anything, this benchmark makes the Skull
Canyon’s Iris Pro 580 look respectable with its
four-year-old, 1080p-capable integrated
graphics.
Why do this to the Intel UHD Graphics
630 part, when we already knew what was to
come? I wanted to clearly sketch out the
NUC9i9QNX’s reliance on a discrete graphics
card to realize its potential. These sets of
numbers make it concrete.
Borderlands 3
Some folks may wonder (like I did) if the Core
i9-9980HK holds back the RTX 2070 in our
review unit, relative to a desktop CPU. So I
fired up a few modern AAA games that can
punish a GPU when all the bells and whistles
get cranked up—because if you’re losing
frames, you’ll care more about it in those
kinds of titles. First I ran benchmarks in three
games on the NUC9i9QNX. Then I removed
its Asus Dual RTX 2070 Mini, installed that
card in the Ryzen 7 2700X streaming PC I builtMiddle-earth Ultra w/4K
textures 1080p
Fps
Alienw51m R1are Area
Core i9-9900K
Acer Predator Helios 700
Core i9-9980HK
Ghost Canyon NUC
Core i9-9980HK
MCore i9-9880HSI GE Raider-51HP OmCore i7-9750Hen 17Dell G7Core i7-8809GHades Canyon NUC
Core i7-8809G
Dell XPS 15 7590Core i9-8950HSkull Canyon NUCCore i7-6770HQGhost Canyon NUC
Core i9-9980HK
LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE197.2134.92154.4169.23189.81116.63153.7363.318.3812