Running The Intel NUC6i7KYK On Linux With Skylake Iris Pro Graphics
I’ve managed to get my hands on an Intel NUC6i7KYK «Skull Canyon» NUC featuring the Core i7 6770HQ Skylake CPU with Iris Pro Graphics 580. When paired with 32GB of RAM and a Samsung 950 PRO 500GB NVMe SSD, it makes for a very speedy, small form factor Linux-friendly PC.
This week I’ve started out testing the NUC6i7KYK under Linux. Many more benchmarks will come in the days ahead, just wanted to share some initial thoughts for those that may be looking at a post-holiday PC upgrade. This latest Intel NUC comes in a 211 x 116 x 28 mm sized enclosure, making it very slim while offering a lot of potential with the i7-6770HQ CPU, dual M.2 SATA3/NVMe SSD slots, dual channel DDR4-2133+ SO-DIMMs, Thunderbolt 3 / USB 3.1 Gen 2, Wireless-AC 8260 WiFi onboard, and HDMI 2.0 / mini DP 1.2 / DisplayPort 1.2 Type-C.
This Core i7 Skylake NUC currently retails for $525 USD on Amazon without any storage or RAM. The Core i7-6770HQ is a quad-core CPU with Hyper Threading (eight logical cores), 2.6GHz base frequency, and 3.5GHz turbo frequency with a 45 Watt TDP. The onboard Iris Pro Graphics 580 have a base frequency of 350MHz and a maximum dynamic frequency of 950MHz. The Iris Pro Graphics 850 can support 4K displays — 24Hz when using HDMI or 60Hz with DisplayPort.
So far in my testing of this NUC6i7KYK, it’s been working well with Linux. Ubuntu 16.10 has been my primary target thus far but will be running other distribution benchmarks in the days ahead — in fact, will be using it for my year-end desktop/gaming distribution comparison on the Intel side. The wireless, Ethernet, UEFI, DP / HDMI, Iris Pro SKL 3D graphics, and all other key functionality has been working in my tests thus far with the only feature I haven’t tested as of writing yet is the Thunderbolt 3.
Intel «Haswell» Iris Pro Linux Graphics Yield Some Wins Against Windows
For the past few days at Phoronix we have begun looking extensively at the Intel Iris Pro 5200 graphics under Linux, since receiving the System76 Galago UltraPro. The Iris Pro 5200 are the new high-end Intel Haswell graphics that have 128MB of embedded video RAM on the die, which should yield a nice performance boost when properly implemented within the Intel Linux driver. Already our testing has found the Iris Pro performance on Linux has doubled with open-source driver improvements since Haswell’s launch. Now we’re out today with our first Intel Iris Pro OpenGL gaming benchmarks between Ubuntu Linux and Microsoft Windows 8 for this Intel Core i7 Ultrabook.
The most recent Linux vs. Windows benchmarks done at Phoronix for Intel Haswell hardware was done at the end of July when the results were still rather mixed. The Intel Windows OpenGL driver still tended to be faster than the open-source Linux driver. The Windows driver is also more feature-rich in supporting OpenCL and OpenGL 4.0 while the Linux driver isn’t yet to feature parity with all of the hardware’s capability, only handles OpenGL ~3.2 at the moment, and there’s only an experimental OpenCL implementation. As another example, even OpenGL debugging is worse with Linux than Windows.
While two months ago the Windows vs. Linux driver results were mixed, it should be interesting to see how the OS comparison goes today given that Intel released a new Haswell graphics driver for Windows 7/8 last week and there’s daily improvements being made to the open-source Linux hardware support. We’re now up to the Linux 3.12 kernel being in early development along with Mesa 9.3 for the Intel DRI user-space driver.
For our Windows 8 testing, Microsoft Windows 8 Pro x64 was in use with all available software updates as of this week. The Intel Windows driver used during testing was the Iris/HD 15.31.17.3257 driver that was released on 11 September to succeed the original Haswell Windows driver from mid-May. On the Linux side we benchmarked both the Ubuntu 13.04 x86_64 stock configuration with the Linux 3.8 kernel, Mesa 9.1.4, and xf86-video-intel 2.21.6. After doing the stock testing of the latest Ubuntu Linux stable release, we then upgraded to the Linux 3.12 Git kernel (just before the 12.1-rc1 tagging), Mesa 9.3.0-devel git-395b941, and xf86-video-intel 2.99.902. This represents all of the latest Intel Linux graphics driver improvements that have been merged as of this week.
The System76 Galago UltraPro that was used for all of the Iris Pro testing is loaded with an Intel Core i7 4750HQ CPU, 8GB of system memory, and 120GB Intel SSD. The OpenGL graphics benchmarking under Ubuntu Linux and Windows 8 were facilitated using the Phoronix Test Suite software for carrying out enterprise-quality tests in a fully automated and reproducible manner. The results are hosted on OpenBenchmarking.org to allow for comparisons and other collaborative result analytics.
Intel Iris Pro Linux Performance Doubles With Driver Upgrades
Last week I ran a System76 Galago UltraPro Preview with some benchmark results and a special article looking at the Intel Iris Pro 5200, the Haswell graphics cores with 128MB of dedicated video memory stacked onto the die itself. Those tests were done remotely but now with having a System76 Galago UltraPro ultrabook review sample in the labs, here are some fresh tests looking at the very latest state of Haswell Iris Pro graphics under Linux. The benchmarks cover the state of Ubuntu 13.04 going through the latest open-source Linux graphics driver code with the yet-to-be-released Mesa 9.3 and the Linux 3.12 kernel.
The Galago UltraPro review sample that System76 sent over employs an Intel Core i7 4750HQ CPU with Iris Pro 5200 (Crystal Well) graphics, 8GB of DDR3 system memory, and a 120GB Intel SSD. While Phoronix benchmarks have shown the Intel Haswell performance is dramatically better if using the latest packages over what’s offered in Ubuntu 13.04 and other distributions from earlier in H1’2013, System76 is shipping a relatively stock Ubuntu 13.04 x86_64 configuration with the Linux 3.8 kernel, GCC 4.7, and Mesa 9.1.4.
The full review on this System76 Intel Haswell Ultrabook will be out in a week or two on Phoronix while in this article are more benchmarks looking specifically at the Iris Pro graphics performance on Linux. Compared to the earlier Iris Pro results on Phoronix, this article contains a more extensive selection of Linux OpenGL game benchmarks and it also includes benchmarks from the Linux 3.12 kernel as of this morning. With the Linux 3.12 kernel is support for the 128MB eLLC cache on the Iris Pro, which should help the performance.
The system hardware was the same throughout all of the testing. The clock speed difference reported on the table for the Linux 3.12 kernel is the result of the Linux 3.12 kernel now displaying the Turbo Boost frequency via the cpufreq driver for this Haswell CPU. The software configurations tested were Ubuntu 13.04 stock (Linux 3.8 + Mesa 9.1), Ubuntu 13.04 when upgraded to Mesa 9.3-devel and sticking with the Linux 3.8 stock kernel, the Linux 3.11 kernel with Mesa 9.3-devel, and then the Linux 3.12 Git kernel with Mesa 9.3-devel. This provides a clear look at the «out of the box» Ubuntu 13.04 performance compared to what’s possible with the latest kernel and close to the experience found in Ubuntu 13.10, which will be Linux 3.11 with Mesa 9.2.0 stable.
All benchmarks in this article were conducted in a fully streamlined and automated manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite software and hosted in a collaborative manner on OpenBenchmarking.org.